peeling flowers

the future is irreparable when you don't know the next path to take

my depression started at the same age my daughter is now /or maybe a couple years before/I keep thinking how I wanted to escape my parents/ indifference to living/their ashtrays were overflowing/but their words to each other were spare/ except for insults/ he called her sugar tits/he called her a cunt/she retreated to her mind/ only came out once and while/ to call him an asshole/ he always laughed/ when she finally took the bait

I was his saving grace /or so he told me/ at night/ I chanted my anxiety away/ prayed to a god I didn't know/ both my parents were atheists/the devil visited my dreams/nightly/nightmares/ insomnia plagued me/ my mom  asleep on the couch/ after her nightly elixir of kahlua and milk/ I stayed awake wondering/ how I was going to get through life

my mom would appear in my bedroom/ spoke to me so rarely/ I never knew if it was a dream/she would sit on the end of my bed smoking cigarettes/ talk as if we were girlfriends/tell me about her plan to escape this prison of a life/ I was happy to be seen/ if only to push the ashtray towards her/ and listen/I counted down the days until my own escape 

knowing/ all the while/ that he would come home eventually/ she wouldn't leave him /knowing that I would be the one/ to comfort him/ in their bed/ spooning a grown man/ as if he were the child/he would tell me about his dreams/ while she  slept downstairs/he read me books on lucid dreaming and astral projection./I thought he saw me as an equal/until he didn't/he always turned/kindness cruelty it's all the same/ or so he told me

he saw me as what he never could become/ told me how to get through this world/how to survive/as if I wasn't already surviving/the days spent inside/ while all the other kids played outside/ in a dark room/ next to him/ staring at the peeling flowers on the wall/it wasn't healthy/it was what I had/ I loved him/my real dad was in jail/he didn't want me/ I learned to stay still/ I learned to imagine/a life outside/ that room

he made me feel chosen/It was suffocating/ it was better than nothing/she couldn't hug me/ or tell me she loved me/ I was too young/ to know of her trauma/when I am a teenager she will tell me/ she wishes I had never been born /he will yell at her and hold me all night/ no one knows that we are the same/that she doesn't love him either/ so we have to love each other/ he keeps forgetting I am not her/ in the middle of the night I pretend to sleep/he tells me he loves me more than life itself /he reads me Lolita /we watch the movie/ he watches my face/ I learn to hide /I learn how to do it well

my mom is still back there/ her mind/haunted/I am like her now/we haunt our own bodies/ we look through our eyes/but we are never here/I still climb the ladder/ of his words/maybe he was lies/maybe he was evil/ sometimes you have nothing left/ to go on/your past propels you forward/  not getting stuck there/ is enough/to hold on to/ once you were important/ even if/ it was for all the wrong reasons