at the freak show we make friends

at dusk
my skin is covered in goosebumps
not the nice kind that come
from tickles or kisses on the nape
of the neck
but the kind that comes from
knowing that you aren’t alone
when you would rather be alone
 
the dead have come to visit
and I am so tired of this
they stand in line
as if they are waiting
for a ride at the town fair
 
I see them with their tickets
clutched in fists
I am the tilt a world to them
there are children in the line
with worn out stuffed animals
threads hanging at the eyes
 
It is my time to succumb to this
I sit in the hands of the nearest angel
and one by one the dead tell me
their stories
I can’t help thinking
how much the living suck
I am an echo of life
 I hold limbless children
 bombed in a war that
their parents kept them in
the dark about
 
 I think how horrible
 the world can be
some teenage girls
that were raped and murdered
before they had a chance
to climb into themselves
flank me as my guard angels
they carry the pain of knowledge
 they wish they had never known
 
a child buried in a corn field
holds a corn cob
he made his home in the dirt
after his father killed him and his mother
the corn is his doll his comfort
 
they feed on me like leeches
I am not sure I care anymore
they extract my girlhood ghost
 like a bad tooth
 this is a symbiotic relationship
 
we haunt the Ferris wheel
imagine what it might be like
to ascend
but our pain keeps us down
with all the demons here
on earth we have to make due
with this existence
 
at the freak show we make friends
some of them leave with us
we travel on thought
in the night on roads forgotten
we remember how we are
like one another and that is enough