wordplayground

i want to sit you down
ask three thousand questions
because
i don't understand
where the hate comes from.
i don't understand
how you put together
those words
in that order
to say the most hurtful
hateful angry things.
i don't understand
how you're making sense
of this
in your head.
i don't understand
the sadness and isolation
lack of self or love
that must be rotting away
inside you.

my wings torn off so that
i might never fly away and
miss another moment,
i would ground myself
out of necessity.

i would lose the ridiculous fantasy
that i might save the falling
after i couldn't catch
her.

prove that i am not any one
thing or moment.

torn to break my association
with the world where
i couldn't contain or
appropriately direct my anger.

i might live her life
four times over, but
i too would never fly.

wings torn off so that
i might believe 
i once had wings.

i feel strange
displaced
i feel 15-years-old
runaway
with too much weight on my back
because 
i was afraid
i might need everything

i've done this so many times 
that it took me 7 minutes
from the time i decided,
packed,
started the car...
i almost got away
but you heard my engine roar
in protest of the cold
i was surprised that you called
i thought you would be relieved
without even knowing 
if i was leaving
for minutes, hours, days, years
just relieved 
to see me go

...i hate the world that made me into
nothing a child should ever be 
let alone the adult that later remains

my dreams are smashed underneath you
on the concrete
because the world should have been a better place
and the ground should have been pillows
because you had wings
but didn't fly

i came back to visit
(they call it coming home)
but all you could see
were the fragments i left behind
tiny pieces of myself,
pieces i forgot, but to you,
they're all that i am.
in the thirty seconds of your time,
i realized you had forgotten most of me,
and clung to little moments.
the years we spent together,
worked together, lived together,
the music, the parties, the jokes,
the smiles, the tears,
how could you forget?
you remembered the blood on the kitchen floor,
and in order to forgive your mom 
you had to hate me.
you remembered that i left,
and in order to forgive your dad
you had to hate me.
but part of you must remember
that there was so much more.
(i miss you)

if you ask me how i got here
i'll offer a million and one theories
i can't tell you what i wanted at the time
but i know i found what i was looking for
i never really hated you
i hated my own uncertainty,
insecurity,
i hated being all grown up
accidentally locked
inside a little girl's body
then i hated being twenty
inside a body falling apart

in my mind
i am always
telling you off
telling you off
again.
but i sit here
silently
without a word
who is in control now?
you think this is
your time?
your space?
your idea?
i won't give in 
i won't give up
so who is in control
now
i'll just keep 
telling you off
telling you off
again.

and it needs to keep going
because this
is no sort of epitome
you would be so self-centered
to think we're the top
just cause you can't see
a million years ahead
just as you can't see
a million years back
we're so great
that we'll manage 
to kill everything off
single-handedly