A Poem About Growing Up And August {august 31, 2022}

a poem about growing up and august {august 31, 2022}

August has come and gone like all Augusts do and my body is coiled around years prior. I am who I was a year ago, heart drawn carelessly on my sleeve, sitting in the same backseat, younger and far less bittersweet. The sun is coming through my window the same and my brother is bopping his head to his music the same, but despite this all I wouldn't recognize myself if we met. August is a broken, small-stepped month for fools; you don't notice when it arrives and far less so when it's gone.

kitchen fridge (november 29, 2022)

The sun is coming through the window at just the right angle and this house isn't really a home anymore. Memories ooze from the floor and fill up the room till I feel the need to run to the bathroom and throw up. The ghosts in the memories point and taunt, pictures perfect versions of who we once were.

We whispered lies through tight embrace, deceiving our bodies till they bled. Things don't ever truly change, I tell myself, we are still we. But our family lives in different states.

This house isn't really a home anymore, not with us gone. My soul left with your bodies, with dollar store sushi and Othello on the floor and nights turned to mornings. I have never used the word family to describe it but perhaps it is, ones we never had. Them turns to us and then back again.

This house is built on ghosts. They climb in through your mouth when you're sleeping, choking you up in the mornings when you see the pictures and little passing notes on the kitchen fridge. They travel down, pulling on your heartstrings, leaving a funny feeling called "ring my phone when you get the chance" in your stomach. It doubles you over with nausea. Before they go, they travel all the way down to your knees, making you think that they;re still scabbed and skinny like when you all first met. The ghosts leave you to bleed out in broad daylight. The delirious feeling brings a promise to come again.

This house was built on memories, back when it was a home. Wishbones make up the frame and Sundays build the drywall, our bodies curled out inside. Shooting stars and fallen eyelashes mark the distance between us and I keep waiting for that call, waiting to see a stranger to show up on the doorstep with their bags and a gift, something too meaningful to reduce to a three letter word like hug or maybe a three word phrase I've heard come from them before.

Grow old and grow out. Cracked bones heal over stronger, and when a good thing comes your way you'd be smart to go running after (I was never too bright). The way life simply is will never seize to sneak up on me and make my nose bleed. I want to ask if we are still an us anymore, but underneath the taped together photographs on the kitchen fridge, I know the answer.

memento mori (remember you must die)  {december 4, 2022}

I’m thirteen now, in 12 minutes, and I can taste the blood in my mouth. I need to leave this bedroom and run to a place where no one knows my name, but I can’t seem to catch my breath. There is no escaping time.

For the first time in my life the day that I was born has not been spent alone. I have a family now and we shout and laugh and beat our chests like boys do, breathing in the cold air and spitting at the earth for suggesting that we sleep. And yet my bloody nose has licked my lips and the iron reminds me that there is no running from the world.

I hold my future in papercut hands, every passing moment a reminder that I can never be the way I once was. Now I am woman, now I am adult. I make decisions and I have money and I hold cards in the dynasty of girlhood. I am not the first and I am not the last. This is a very old, very well-told story. But what’s the difference between a day and the next when all my family sees is a high-cheekboned child, scraped knees and crooked teeth?

And so I lean over my sink, morning skinny and lightheaded. Shaky hands bring water to a matured creature. The cycle is midnight and then up again at dawn and then repeat. Stretched thin with bony elbows over paper and numbers and notes and sore muscles. I am seeing this new family more than a barely-thirteen-year-old would, especially one who never stops running, one who never sits down and no longer breathes warm air. Unhealthy as it is, I crave it; the last thing I need is time to think and time to realize I haven’t been home in years. Morning skinny and lightheaded, I take a cold shower and remember that I promised myself to stay disciplined.

Ever since my tenth, time is moving faster. As precise as I am, I can never seem to catch up or prepare myself. The revelation has only just hit and broke my jaw, bleeding my nose, forcing me to relive my seventh where I still had training wheels and saw daylight a different way. But I am thirteen now and there is no time to waste. I must work harder and be faster and be better. I must stay disciplined as I promised so long ago (time flies; I will reach through the air and grab its wings) and never grow weary, never lose motivation. Thirteen is at stake; eventually I will catch up and hold it in my bloodied fist. After all, I have been running my whole life, and time has only just begun to.