Duality Read online

  And the silence that is even louder.

  You know too much of mourning,

  Mainly for the childhood you lost too soon.

  When your house is not a home, other buildings take its place.

  The empty lot in the cul-de-sac you used to escape,

  The tennis courts at the community center,

  Homes of friends where you felt your chest physically pang

  When you knew it was time to return to your own house

  But not your own home.

  Why is residency so defining for us?

  Why do we let our address dictate our adequacy?

  Why does the trauma of one house follow you to another?

  You thought physical relocation would be enough

  But the ghosts of that house still follow you.

  Even if they aren’t loud, traumatic ghosts,

  You still hear their echoes in the walls of your new apartment.

  If your house is not a home while you grow up,

  You spend your adult life trying to figure out what “home” is.

  Maybe you mistake a person for home,

  And when they leave your heart is served an eviction.

  All the things a home is supposed to be:

  Warm, comforting, inviting, a solace from the harshness of the world,

  You learned these things from outside your house.

  From movies, friends, classmates.

  You didn’t know you were the exception until you saw what “normal” was.

  “Normal” homes have smiles, not shouts.

  Full pantries, soft sheets, acceptance from those beneath the roof.

  Normal houses have people who stay up until midnight to make sure you get home safely.

  Homes are supposed to keep harsh weather out,

  But when your house is not a home

  The storm is within the four walls.

  When you wake up, will it be clear skies?

  Yesterday was a downpour,

  Today could be a hurricane as much as it could be sunshine.

  It depends on the mood of the weatherman

  Or simply the presence (or lack) of one.

  When your house is not a home,

  You call yourself cursed and try to make one of your own,

  And you spent your adulthood swearing

  That your new home will not reflect

  The old house you grew up in.

  I’m tired of seeing

  Dollar signs

  In the eyes of the decision makers.

  Why do I care so much about the opinions of others?

  When did their views become the important ones?

  How can I be proud of who I am if who I am is relying on other’s opinions of me?

  Will I ever be good enough?

  Will I ever be good enough?

  Will I ever be good enough?

  For him?

  For them?

  For me?

  Numbers

  Numbers

  Numbers

  Are the least interesting thing about you.

  Height

  Weight

  Follower count

  Bank account

  SAT score

  Likes on a photograph

  People who view your art

  People who disagree with you.

  Numbers

  Numbers

  Numbers

  Do not define you.

  I miss the days of

  “Cooties”

  Where I had a silly but effective reason

  To run from boys who made me uncomfortable.

  Now I have to make small talk,

  Pretend I have a boyfriend,

  Or fake a phone call

  To get away from the guy at the bar.

  Who never grew out of his cooties

  And keeps ordering drinks and calling me “cutie.”

  It was easier to run away on the playground.

  If the sinking feeling from a dropping elevator had a name,

  It’d be yours,

  Followed by the bell ring of regret

  As the doors open but I don’t get off.

  Kids are afraid of what goes bump in the night.

  Adults are afraid of what goes bump in the air.

  Me?

  I’m afraid of who I have to be after we land

  And the turbulence continues on the ground.

  Do not turn your future into an idol.

  It should be a hope and a dream,

  But not an all-or-nothing deal.

  Don’t destroy it with expectations before it begins.

  When They Leave You

  When he leaves you, you’ll cry on your lunch break because you saw his favorite dog breed

  And you can’t send him a picture.

  When she leaves you, you’ll punch the wall in the middle of the night

  Because when you reached across the bed it was empty. Like you.

  When he leaves you, you think wine will make you feel better

  But it only sweetens the taste of tears.

  When she leaves you, you’ll realize how plain your apartment actually is.

  She was the one who brought the color.

  When he leaves you, you’ll take the long way home to pass his favorite park,

  The one where he kissed you

  So that it can remind you that you once shared something more than a memory.

  When she leaves you, you’ll smoke on your balcony in the dead of winter

  So the warmth of the cigarette can remind you of how she felt against your chest.

  When you leave each other, you hope it’s not for the last time.

  When he leaves you, you’ll stare at the phone.

  When she leaves you, you’ll ask her to come back, come home.

  When he leaves you, you’ll re-read all of his misspelled letters in the dark.

  When she leaves you, you’ll paint your thumbnail with the polish she left in your bathroom.

  When they leave you, you’ll feel like you’re dying

  Or maybe you already did, and your version of hell is life without her. Without him.

  But you’ve gone on living, regardless, without them.

  When he leaves, every deep voice will remind you of when he said,

  “Baby, come back to bed.”

  When she leaves you, the smell of roses will make you clench your fists.

  You’ll scream

  Is this hell?

  No one on earth deserves this pain

  Why do I have to have this pain?

  Missing is too soft a word for the aching inside my bleeding chest.

  I turned my past into a dictionary

  And let it define me word by word.

  Each term nearly laid out and cataloging myself,

  A handful of letters that I’d decided captured my essence.

  It is a very heavy book that I’ve added to my load.

  Christian Hipsters:

  How are you supposed to let Jesus wash your feet

  if you’re afraid of getting your expensive leather Birkenstocks wet?

  My feelings for you mirror the candles you light each night.

  Flickering, either burning bright or barely ablaze.

  All in or barely breathing.

  Because there’s no in between when it comes to fire.

  It either destroys or creates,

  Just like your touch.

  Sunscreen sticking to our skin,

  Running through Walmart for last minute beach towels,

  Trying to pretend that Mom wasn’t just crying in the parking lot

  And that we are a normal family

  On a normal vacation.

  “Doomed from the start”

  Doesn’t mean doomed throughout.

  Only doomed at the end.

  And boy,

  Is the “throughout” part fun.

  The world is different at night.

  Especially in the quiet, in th
e tired,

  In the “ready to exist somewhere else.”

  Redeyes take us at our most vulnerable and place us somewhere new.

  Once a boy took me to dance in a beautiful graveyard

  When I was in college and stupid and giggly and

  intrigued.

  Afternoon sunlight spilled across the hillside

  And as he spun me around I wondered if I should feel

  guilty.

  This was a place people mourned, where loved ones

  were buried,

  And even though I did not walk across their graves,

  Would they be upset to know I was near them in such a

  manner?

  But as he pulled me into him, I knew if I was buried

  here

  Among the flowers and trees and big, blue sky

  I would want people to celebrate my soul by dancing by

  my bones.

  Let us both mourn

  And celebrate

  The brevity of life

  And finality of death

  Together.

  And if you are reading this and remember that day,

  I hope you know how much you meant to me.

  Give me all the true crime,

  The serial killers and murders.

  Give me the scary stories,

  The horror and the spooky,

  Blood and the dark and the creatures within it.

  Nothing can scare me more than my own mind,

  But it’s always up for a challenge.

  Lock.

  Shut.

  Close.

  Slam.

  Why is every action for a door so harsh?

  We watch people walk out and never return.

  We use it to separate people and places.

  We associate it with leaving.

  A piece of wood can be the deciding factor between

  Peace

  And chaos.

  Sometimes the people who aren’t in our lives

  Influence us

  More than those who are.

  No matter how much you think you don’t need them,

  Absence often makes the heart break harder.

  And it’s difficult to deny the impact of a shadow

  That stole a piece of you when it faded away.

  Nostalgia is a dirty, rotten liar

  Who will turn the harshest black lines of memory

  Into watercolor rainbows.

  Do not forget the depth of that darkness.

  People scoff at the idea of addiction

  Until they become dependent themselves.

  Your presence became worse than nicotine to me;

  I craved you every time you left

  But found myself unsatisfied

  When you finally arrived.

  The bar for women is so damn high,

  Brushing the clouds and atmosphere.

  Thin waist, fat ass,

  A personality to please the population.

  The bar for men…

  Women are surprised when they listen,

  When they wait,

  Or when they are simply kind

  Because these have been proven to be harder to find than expected.

  The bar for men is on the ground.

  The bar for men is in hell.

  The most powerful curse word is not four letters

  But the curse of “should.”

  What we should be doing,

  Should feel,

  Should act like.

  When we say should,

  We create an idol of ourselves that we worship but will never become.

  When did I start to believe that I always take up too much space and time?

  Who told me that my presence is unwelcome,

  That my existence unnecessary?

  These thoughts are not supported by anyone I love,

  Anyone who knows my heart,

  And yet they circle around my brain like a cobra,

  Squeezing my value until it suffocates and slips away,

  Stops existing,

  Stops taking up space and time.

  At some point in my life

  I was told that “no problem”

  Is a correct response to “Thank you.”

  In adopting this phrase I became the problem solver

  For every person who made a request,

  Taking on the world’s problems to prove my worth.

  At some point simply saying, “you’re welcome”

  Was no longer enough, was lazy.

  “No problem?”

  There are so many problems that I cannot possibly solve.

  Muted

  This is just another rape poem.

  Except it’s not.

  Because there’s no “just” when it comes to rape,

  Let alone any justice.

  I never stopped writing, even when my heart turned black

  And my mind turned to shadows to protect me from what you did.

  The words never stopped, but I wrote about other things.

  The words about you never came.

  They needed to, I needed to.

  I needed to write my way out,

  Out of the trauma you’d carved into my skin with the sharp edge of a kiss.

  But even with 26 letters and millions of combinations available

  My mouth was muted when it came to you.

  Duct tape slapped over my lips,

  Censored content removed from my literary legacy

  Things I would not, could not write about.

  You dried up the inkwell of that moment in time that should have spurred a thousand poems with a thousand feelings

  But instead the clicking of the keyboard fell silent

  When I tried to find the words to write about it.

  Even now, I can only write about not writing.

  I cannot write about the feelings, the experience.

  Well, I can write about it. But I cannot write beautifully.

  The words that come out are

  “anger, fear, rage, violated, tears, confused, dark and drunk but definitely said no.”

  All words that I have crafted into beautiful pieces before,

  But they were poems about other things,

  Not this thing.

  The words are mute like the memories are a blur.

  How dare you take away the one strength I am proudest of.

  How dare you make me the mermaid who lost her voice for what she thought was love.

  And the worst part?

  I don’t think you even know the damage you have done, the voice you have stolen.

  You keep it locked away in your memories,

  In a box in the back of your mind that is covered in dust because for you it was just another bad night,

  But nothing more because you were not the one put on mute.

  You were not the one who lost your voice.

  You got to continue as normal, because what was normal for you

  Is not normal for me

  And never will be again.

  I don’t get to shove the box into the back of my mind and let it collect dust under the bed

  Because I now am terrified of what happens between people in bed.

  That box is right underneath it, reminding me like a twisted princess in the pea

  That beds are supposed to be a place of love and rest

  But mine has a lump in the mattress that matches the one in my throat when a boy grasps me a little too tightly

  But I can’t tell him to stop because my voice is still locked in your box and I don’t know where to start searching for the key.

  Maybe I never will.

  Who even uses lock and key now anyways? Maybe it’s a voice activated system just to dig the knife in a little deeper, taunting me with what I don’t have.

  Maybe it’s password protected in the cloud, so close but just out of reach because I don’t know the name of your childhood pet.

  I never thought to ask
and you probably wouldn’t have answered because

  You never learned how to use your mouth for anything good anyway.

  But at least you have the choice,

  You have the option.

  You weren’t the one who was muted.

  PART THREE

  DARK

  You always take good sleep for granted

  Until you are staring at the ceiling at 4am

  Wondering why your melatonin isn’t working

  And what he’s doing right now.

  I am so good at pretending I am strong,

  I fear I’ve forgotten who I am

  Beneath the false armor.

  It doesn’t matter how much time passes.

  It’s been two years and even now