Mama's hands were smooth and cool
When she pushed my hair back and told me not to worry
Because sometimes mommies and daddies fight, but that's okay.
My childhood stretched before me
A long dirt road where daddy's absence hung in the air like
The sour smell of whiskey
On his breath
When he tucked me in at night
He always had the same shade of lipstick smeared on his neck
I found it later in a Walgreens downtown
Revlon number seven, Not Your Mother's Mauve
How ironic, I thought.
Because Mama never did wear lipstick

I remember nights where she sat in the living room
Painted blue, she kept her anguish in a secret place
Where I am not, and daddy always will be
She kept him there
Suspended in a light
Not of scrutiny but of love
And I hated him for it
Because my mother's loss would tear her apart
And I was left behind a closed bedroom door
The grieve for my happy family.

When the leaves fell, they fell like bombs.
Crashing to the ground noiselessly
But he could feel the impact of each delicate leaf hitting the soft autumn ground
And when he looked up at the trees, stretching their bare branches towards the sky,
He saw young Vietnamese children, reaching out to their mothers
Who lay lifeless
Slumped against the walls of empty buildings
Once called home.
And when he closed his eyes to sleep at night
He was haunted by comrades
Who had fallen beside him
And left behind widows and children and lives
all in the name of democracy.

They say the wounds of war can never really heal.
I know yours didn't.
We won the war
But you lost yours
Were you contemplating surrender when you held that familiar friend in your hands?
A gun had once defended your life, but now it prepared to take it
Did you think about wives and children and sorrow?
Or were you simply thinking of the dead, autumn leaves falling from the branches?
You, too, died in autumn,
But you fell in spring.

The windows were down
My feet were on the dashboard
You asked me if Everything was okay
I lied

You told me you were broken
When really you just wanted us to run to you
Armed with hot glue guns
Our eyes glued on you
Trying to find the cracks in your foundation
Staring at your selfish smile

He kissed my collarbone
and left seeds in the marrow
that in turn bloomed into myosotis of the bluest blue
When he was away
it was only their vines that
held my bones together

Isn't it ironic how
she painted her eyes dark
and cut her wrists
and kissed too many boys
and smoked things she shouldn't
and played photographer
just to be different
then she just ended up like everybody else?

I think that before you fight for the rights of animals
the rights of humans must be secured.
So before spitting in my face for not crying about humans slaughtering animals
Maybe you could turn your attention to the humans slaughtering humans.