The Nothing
If you look into my eyes and you just happen to find
that the smile I put on is not true to what is inside,
just know that I have walked on broken glass each day of my life.
I have seen what people look like when they are anything but kind.
Instead of letting my feet bleed out,
I have grown callouses and wrapped around bandages a million times.
I met addiction as I read my first chapter book,
my mother downing a bottle in the dull light of the kitchen.
Instead of helping me sound out the word bicycle,
she cried to me about how my dad could not help pay the bills,
and about how my addict sisters were both going downhill.
I watched the people around me battle with themselves.
I listened to my father tell me how he was going through hell.
That is why I insist on helping the people that might not deserve it;
they are the ones who are going home to children
who are too young to worry about what is paying rent.
I am aware that my efforts to seem independent are frustrating.
I can not rely on you
after everyone I have depended on has let me down.
So I built a life jacket out of my own means instead of allowing myself to drown.
I am not sure if you notice that my hands are always shaking,
sometimes too much to write notes down.
My life is a battle ground for everything that is forsaken.
My shadow will tell me that this good that I have found
is only bad in disguise just like everything else.
Nothing in my life has been good and only that.
It will give me cigarette scented kisses and then turn it’s back.
And I will be embarrassed if you noticed how tightly I hold your hand in mine,
or how I think the way the stars align is some kind of sign.
Whenever you leave everything turns back to the nothing,
this nothing is like an envelope that you have to lick to seal.
In here it is not exactly loneliness that I feel.
I am suffocated and surrounded by the guilt of not feeling what I should.
You have ripped open the doors I always have shut.
When you leave you lick the envelope, and you mail me off to this nothing,
where every door I try to open is locked.
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