I miss my parents more than I thought I would at 30.

That's not to say I forgive them, or want to speak to them, or want to actually see them.

Maybe I don't miss my parents, but I miss the thought of having parents at all. The safety and idealism of being able to fall back into someone's loving arms.

Except, what I experienced wasn't love at all..  wasn't familial bonds, wasn't safety, wasn't security, wasn't the basic needs of my childhood being fulfilled...

I often joke I was raised by a wolf pack. But only if that wolf pack was a lone wolf, myself, by myself always as leader of a pack.

I still hoard canned goods like the apocalypse might happen, like I might not have money, like I might have to throw a couple things in a pan and make it edible for three kids

I miss my parents, or what should have been parents but was instead a cold dark cave with nothing but the growls of hungry bellies.

I miss the wolves, oh wait, my parents, oh wait, when I look in the mirror I see her cheekbones and his eyebrows and I can't help but want to push my fist right through the glass.

The wolves, I mean black sheep, I mean parents that begot me always haunt my reflection, always come through in the worst ways as I reflect on my life, how do you reflect on this and feel gratitude?

I miss my parents, or the idea of having parents, I guess.

I didn't realize that it would hurt to see your name.
Why do I always open my stupid ******* mouth?

I've only ever been good at ******* **** up for myself

Who needs a faux pas when your mouth opens and you should bury your head in the sand?

The four walls around me have felt like a prison for longer than I'm willing to admit on paper

But I'd do the time again and again if it meant I could spend one more minute hearing your laugh, one more second watching the sparkle in your eyes, one more hour holding you in my arms, our hearts beating against each other.

There is something insane about me, sure. You'll hear that a lot, my boy. I've made poor choices. I've done wild things. I've lived enough lives for seven people. I've gone through literal hell.

But it was all worth it to be your mom. It will all be worth it to watch you grow.

Prison, I suppose, isn't so bad with a cool bunkie.

The ring finger is supposed to be the loveline, the path right to the heart, the "right" line

But I've seen far more work from index fingers, middle fingers, the palm of a large calloused hand pressed just right...

The ring finger means so little in the frame of a life, marriage just a pretty little lie we tell ourselves to excuse lust, to pretend like we're not all animals ourselves

I'd wager the true loveline is the one that points arrows below the bellybutton, that makes a leg shoot out too straight, that curls toes

Is love even a line, or just a black hole leading to a womb, the place where all things begin?

Scene one, Childhood

I never really learned to emotionally regulate,
Taking clues from Nickelodeon more than parents who set good examples,
Screaming fights and bruises and broken glass
Too much drinking, the smell of cigarettes
Moms broken bones
Make yourself small, make yourself gone
They may not notice you.

We played family a lot, curtaining blankets over a bunk bed to block the outside, and in family, I always took care of my babies.

Scene two, 18

I never really learned to emotionally regulate, taking clues from the friends around me more than parents who set any example.
A false father leaving, a mom losing her cash cow
The smell of Arbor Mist and ***** still makes me sick, mom’s incoherent fists still make contact in my sleep, I still wouldn’t have given her the keys.

We don’t play anymore. We’re mostly estranged. But we work. And in family, I always took care of my babies.

Scene three, 28

I’m trying to learn to emotionally regulate, the slideshow of couches and faces of therapists trying to set an example.
A son born to trauma, a marriage of consequence, I’m still learning to love myself, please, the sound of yelling still makes me sick,
I don’t know how to do this.

We are grown now, we are mostly put together. And now we live. But this is my family, and I will always take care of my babies

I was conceived on acid and whippets, the drugs a kaleidoscope of umbilical dreams.
I was conceived on bad luck and lust, from darkness and sexually exploitive childhood trauma.
I was conceived on teenage dreams and difficult childhoods, to black sheep children of 17.

I was raised on addiction and narcissism, a love bomb here and authoritarian abuse there.
I was raised on the chess long game, to lose a piece here means to win at the end.
I was raised on 2000s tv, Lorelei Gilmore my wish for a mother, Rory my idol.

I taught myself strength in building up a fantasy on the outside while my castle crumbled within.
I picked myself up by the tendrils of a lost childhood, by the whispers of good memories, by the hiding places I found in pages upon pages of someone else’s imagination.

And I let it all go at 28. To find peace. To start over. To build myself a new castle with no more haunted corners or echoes of pill bottles or smells of ***** and orange juice permeating the breaths of those who walk these sacred halls.
Rib cage cut open, heart destroyed and renewed, ancient umbilical nooses cut with teeth.

I will no longer fall victim to my mother’s circumstances or my father’s mistakes, I will never have the soul I’ve created look at me and ask himself if he is loved or safe.

I am cycle breaker,
I am generational karma’s worst ******* fear,
I am no longer frightened maiden,
I am fearsome mother.
I am new.

I wonder if you remember, sitting on your porch smoking a cigarette while I sat on mine

It took me this long to sit back and think about who you used to be.
It's been hard to pick through all of the ****, rotting away the parts of my brain
that have forgotten who we used to be.

It wasn't always this vat of putrid waste, of tossed away hopes, of the essence of failure, of distrust and hatred.

Once before, a fire burning warm, hands held tight, drowning beers and speaking over the dead.

Now the castaways of a shadow's burden, haunting the spirits of the back of our minds.

I'd forgotten what you were like before this, but I can remember now.

Time is the thing that ruins us all, I think.

We hold too much faith on a timeline. "You can't text a boy until after 3 days," "don't have *** with someone you just met," "you barely know each other, don't get too close."

But time has never stopped to look around and cease what its doing so I could collect my ****, why should I wait for time to collect his?

We all live until we die, but with a false timeline narrative in place, keeping up with Mr. Jones and his wife, watching my friends have more babies around me, are we really living if we're in a constant battle that resets every 24 hours?

525,600 minutes and I want to spend them all crushing and rushing and running towards my goals, towards my dreams, towards my love.

"You don't love him, you barely know him, you haven't spent enough time together."

Time is just an illusion of your making, a figment of our shared consciousness. And I have always been a little off beat, a little out of sync.

Move in. Share the bed. The smell of coffee in the morning to wake. The sound of footsteps to the shower.

I'm not giving away any of my minutes with you.

The way my name wraps around his mouth
is the same way I've wrapped my mouth
around him, 100 times, probably more, I stopped keeping track.

What do I have to change?
                             everything
          nothing

And we have been down this road, with its curves and twists, at least 100 times, maybe less, I stopped keeping track.

And I fail to squash it every ******* day, but I will never not miss him. Never not hear his laugh in my dreams.

What do I need to work on?
                             everything
            nothing

Happily ever after seems far away.

I wonder if you remember some of the things I do...
The way your name tumbled out of my mouth as I took careful instruction
on just where to touch...
Or the hours we spent talking about nothing.
Or the way I used to be...
Or if I am just the me I am now,
still lost but still bold and unafraid,
with different scars and deeper forehead wrinkles.
Aging is irrelevant in this part of my head, you're still just as much welcome to this body as you were before.
But I don't need instructions on how to make myself scream your name anymore, I can do that all on my own...

Though help is always appreciated.

Can I just
                 S
                    t
                      u
                 ­       m
                           b
                             l
                               e
                   into your arms again and again?

Hear me out,
5 years will pass quickly and slowly.
A jumble of seconds, slow and steady to create another 525,600 minutes to close out this last chapter.

Growth comes and goes in waves, realization its steady companion. We are still so ******* young.

Perhaps Peter Pan had it right. I do not want to be grown yet, stuck between birth and death; I watch time tumble treacherously through my fingers like quicksand, no where to go but down.

Yet I can pick you up like a favorite book. I've seen all the creases and fades and lines and letters before, but it's been 5 long years and there's something exciting about you still.

If this steady crawl to the end is it for all of us, perhaps I'll meet you in the next life. Maybe next time, we can get it right.

Laid up on the couch with one leg casually tossed over yours,
the room still vaguely spinning with one eye open.
Maybe downing 4 beers in an hour wasn't such a good idea, but my anxiety got the better of me, and I didn't know what else to do while everyone else stared at their phones and I stared at you, memorizing the planes of your face so I won't forget them again.
My head is pounding and I doze, YouTube in the background. It has to be late, or early.
The fan blows against my skin and I peek to see if you are still there. Yup. Okay. Breathe, Mel, breathe.
The nauseating feeling of being left again roils my stomach. Or maybe that's the beer again.
It has to be early, or late. But this moment will burn in my memory for days as I psychoanalyze everything I've done wrong that could make you want to run.
Is it early or late?
I wake up and you're not there, but when I stumble to the bathroom you're laying in your bed and I would join you but the room is still spinning and I need to just lay back down.

It has long been time to say goodnight,
The hands of the clock caressing my face, lulling me into secluded silence.
But I can still smell your skin on me, feel the bite of the binds.
And so the cigarette still burns. On. And on. And on. And the tears still fall. On. And on. And on.
Agony is telling the same story over and over until you believe it. "I'm fine, I don't think about it anymore. I'm over it."
And then you see something. Or hear something. Or read the ******* newspaper. And your name is never under arrest.
Maybe you never hurt anyone again. Maybe you only took my voice.
Maybe the cigarette still burns so close to my fingers that I have scars. Maybe I still wait for sleep. Maybe you'll catch fire to that bed dropping a cigarette. Maybe the flames will take you.
Maybe I can wait for the next time the pain will hit. Maybe I can smoke another cigarette.

I married the knight
instead of my Prince Charming.
My heart is empty.

There is no way to get rid of your demons besides exorcism.
Mine must be as buff as Marines the way I talk about them,
Exercising, jumping jacks, squats.
Those ******* have been around as long as my gap tooth has been closed.
I have given them pet names. One is "What If," the other "Past." They like to dance merrily on my tongue as I talk to myself wandering around my house.
They like to be written about, self absorbed and aware as they are that they exist.
What If is the one that yells "hey, hey, look over here!" Past is an introvert, hiding shyly among my innermost workings.
Occasionally, like most super buff dudes do, they get drunk and want to play. That's when the danger starts.
What If is a flirter. He really likes to hit it and quit it with my emotions. Past is that sappy guy that sits at the end of the bar and doesn't say a whole lot, but you can tell he just broke up with his girlfriend by the way he sighs into his drink.
These drunk ******* really need to knock their **** off, if only to let me sleep soundly for a single night.

This is for the people who don't have the suicide hotline number memorized just in case.
For the people who have never cried sitting across from a counselor because their lives are actually perfect.
For the people who have never chainsmoked a pack of cigarettes while their brain flirts with the danger of "what if..."
Whose hands don't shake uncontrollably with the memories of what used to be.
This is for the people who haven't drank an entire bottle just for the peace of sleep
The people who haven't wondered if waking up isn't the scariest part of their day
This is for the people who weren't diagnosed with PTSD, Anxiety, and Depression all in a spin of words.
The people who don't have to hold themselves together with fake promises that survival is only half the battle.
To the people who have never met the call of a razor blade with the skin of their bodies.
This is for the people who say that mental illness is just whining.
Do you realize just how lucky you actually are?

In between drags from a cigarette I can barely taste around the metallic punch of anger, I glare at you.
This fight, that fight, words we don't really mean thrown into the pile with other words like "blame," and "fault" and "whatever." Repetitive jabs meant to engulf and inflame sore scorch marks from past spats.
Between me and you is this smoke, fanned across my line of sight in a way that almost blurs you. Sometimes I wish I could blur you, sand down your harsh edges and pull you back into this calm reality in which I live.
But drag after drag, night after night, the same old fights and the same old cigarettes,
I guess it's the only reality I've ever known.

After him, I swore I'd never fall in love again. Swore it in contract and oath to God and in the eyes of the state of Ohio. After him, I promised I'd never love another boy.
I never meant to lie, to be so madly in love with someone else that it consumes my entire day. To be needed so much that my marriage might be shoved to the back burner. I never meant to be so deeply mad about someone else, to put their needs before my own; to care more about them then I care about my own life.
I never meant to love so deeply this brown eyed boy, this young soul, newly loveable. This boy with the same eyes as his father, as my husband. This boy that will someday call me mom.

Where did I lose myself?
Between lines of paper I stopped filling with my daily musings,
around corners of the walls that hold my family now,
or in my brain, where the illness has swallowed me whole and spit me back out more times than it has not?
I have become an even more fragile soul than before, now relied upon to keep an entire new person whole. It's a curious task when I'm falling apart at the seams.
Where did I go? Hidden amidst old thoughts and harrowed poems, new smells and insomnia,
I have to know the answer to this.
Did I allow my soul to escape between breaths, allow the words that twisted their way through each crevice of my soul to escape me when I decided I had to be more? Did I heal myself just enough that my sicknesses are actually all in my head?

Don't fall victim
It's a trap
Sadness wants
To eat your soul
Away to
Nothing; nothing
Can
Ever replace you

I count each movement as a small victory, each pain in my back and chest a triumph. I can hardly breathe and my chest is on fire but my God am I thankful for it.
I have created an infinity in what was once smaller than the dot on this i. A new universe in tiny fists no bigger than the scar on my knee. An other.
It is terrifying to know what power I hold, and what responsibility. My panic centers are always alive, my depression ebbing and flowing in tides unlike anything I can describe in mere human language.
But each movement, each new pain and new bump in the night, each ugly red fire mark on my skin, each heartburn...
Everything is worth it when I see your tiny black and white face in pictures.
In just three and a half months you will be in flesh.
I have created.

Rekindling old flames and lighting half gone cigarettes is what I'm known for.
It never is quite the same, really. The taste is all but gone, the flint gone from the match before you can even strike it. The taste of you is just a bitter reminder, like kicking that habit for good and taking the first drag off a cigarette in six months.
Then I started over.
There's a difference really from starting an entirely new fire and trying to relight pieces of charred and half burned pine that got rained on. One will burn bright for a minute and fizzle out. The other will burn a lifetime.
That last drag on a new cigarette never tasted more like addiction.

We went our separate ways half a year ago now, and it's funny that today my brain stopped on you.
I'm wondering how your mom is, how your brother is. I'm wondering if the alcohol has finally swept away the last good bits of you with its bitter bite and all of the things I saw in you have drowned in the wretched agony of the depression you refused help for.
I would say that I have prayed for you, but I think God even knows that's wasted on both of us. That's a lie anyway. I didn't pray. I stopped and thought of you twice until today.
I just wish I could have had the apathy you desired, that maybe you could have basked in it for long enough to feel better. I wish that I hadn't started needing you like I did, that your voice didn't bring justification to my long, lonely days.
I wish that the insane amount of love that I had for you could have glued the parts of you that were worth fixing back together, could have dug the alcoholic a new grave and brought back who you were before the bottled ***** betrayed you.
Betrayal is what you're into, I guess. I see it now a little more clearly than I did then.
Just know, I don't wish you poorly when I say I  wish you the best.

I guess every family has to have a black sheep, and in mine, it might as well be me.
With eight younger siblings, following like ducks in a row...
Getting pregnant and married at 22 was the worst thing I could have done, at least according to my mom.
She would have rather I got an abortion, or been a single mother, than would she have chose my marriage.
I guess love doesn't have a thing to do with it, because that's not a path she ever took.
I chose my own way, to do what was best for my family, and because it wasn't her way it was wrong.
I guess, if choosing my own path makes me bad, I have painted myself black, neck to belly, hips to toes.
And if God forbid my siblings cross her, I will always be the worst because I was the first.
So as far as black sheep go...
bahhhh

Bah bah black sheep, have you any wool?
We’ll shield your eyes and make you a fool

One line means that your life will not change. That everything will continue to exist as it was before. That you'll be the same person that you were ten minutes ago. That everything is, and will continue to be, yours.
Two lines means absolute change. Means giving yourself completely up as a person. Means that you'll be new, different. Two lines means that nothing exists as it was before. That nothing belongs to just you anymore. That your life will be shared.

It was the only test I ever passed that I kind of wanted to fail.

I refuse to apologize for the things I've written.
I refuse to apologize for telling truths amongst the cacophony in rhymes, or rhythms, or word *****.
I refuse to not own this brain, to regret my depression, to swallow my anxiety with a pill.
I will not lie, as my family expands and my brain reconforms to standards I forgot, it gets harder to dig up the person that bled for these words.
She and I aren't the same anymore, but we belong to the same body.
So I call on her when I need her, let myself really feel everything, my alter ego: the poet.
As my boyfriend's family asks me what I do for fun, I try not to lie. To say that I pour words from my soul is distasteful. So I joke "I'm a poet of sorts, a writer."
And they look at me with frightened eyes, so I do not tell them this is what I want to do for a living.
I do not tell them about the razor blades beneath my bed at age 16, or the ****** assault at 20.
I do not tell them inside this head is a mess that is desperately hiding.
But I do not disown her. My mess. My poet heart.

The terrible thing about poets is we're all sadistic masochists.
We all want to read about heartache, and we all want to write about the demons that haunt us in our worst hours.
We never talk about our happiness, our productive days and nights where we slept enough.
We drown in each other's depression so nicely, a swimming pool of lonely writers, ink pooling around us each because we always carry pens in our pockets.
No one wants to know how happy we are. How our boring mundane human life of doing dishes and vacuuming the carpet went.
We all want to stick the knives in a little deeper, to draw out a little more of each other's blood. Because honestly, our poetry has always been written in blood, sweat, and tears.
That's the thing about poets. We'd rather be miserable and have something to write about than be happy and have nothing to write about.

It's been a long time since I looked in the mirror and didn't see a stranger.
A long time since "you're beautiful" wasn't met with an instant shake of the head and a laugh.
I don't think he realizes what he's done to me.
While I was busy holding myself together with duct tape and glue, he was learning to stitch his own heart.
And our scars are reminders not of what horror we went through, but that we can make it through anything.
I'm not going to lie, I'm still a mess.
But he's helping me sweep up my broken pieces and catalog what caused the brokenness to begin with.
And as afraid as I am that failure is imminent,
His arms feel like a place I could call home for a long, long time.

I never expected to fall back in.
I suppose jumping is the real word, because I've always been a headfirst without thinking kind of girl.
I've always called it fearless, the words forever tattooed into my ribs, scar tissue raising so that his hands graze it when they touch me,
But oh dear God am I terrified as I make room for my things in his closet
Take a breath and store my makeup under his sink.
This is the first time in forever I can say that I wish I wasn't jumping headfirst.
I am frightened I am falling, forever the fearless female
Now a pile of lovesick mess on the living room floor I share.

You made a poet fall in love with you
And expected her not to write sonnets about your eyes
Haikus about the way you kissed her in the moonlight
Expected the fire in her heart not to inspire couplets
You made a poet fall in love with you, and when you left
Expected her not to write pages about the ache in her chest
Write a soliloquy dedicated to her tears
Expected her not to feel every gut wrenching moment of the pen hitting paper like your words hit her in the most vulnerable places of her mind.
You made a poet fall in love with you, and you expected her to be silent.
That is no fault of hers.