Letters from sixteen

incoherent and verbose

A collection of ramblings, very minimal editing, essentially just dumping myself onto it.

A letter to You
What's on your mind?
If only I could be honest, if only I could vomit this up onto you and not my bedroom floor.
Part of me wonders how different my life would look if I could look someone in the eye without a secret.
Maybe I'll have that one day, maybe, but I'm far too scared to look for it.
Why would I ever want that?
I tell myself, as if I don't know otherwise.
As if I don't know it's the secrets that kill and it may be a secret that leads me to my own funeral.
I had a dream that I went to my own funeral once, when I was in fifth grade.
I watched everyone stare at my casket from a camera in the ceiling.
Call me melodramatic if you want,
I'll pretend like I don't mind,
I do, although I won't tell you that.
if at any point in my childhood I were to die it wouldn't have been then.
Maybe it would have been the first night he did it.
Maybe it would be the night he said he'd kill me.
maybe it'd be when they said I was the crazy one.
I am rotting really and truly.
Like a pumpkin when halloween has past,
Although I'll try to not let them throw me out into the compost.
I will try not to choke on my vomit before I leave this god forsaken house,
But I never said I wouldn't.
If this is understandable by next week to anyone including myself I'll be surprised.
I'm lost, truly and utterly lost.
I am running away from all, yet the woods aren't as bright as I imagined.
I guess I never thought I'd wake this far in.
I knew my life was one I'd spend lost.
I'd always known that, don't tell me otherwise unless you've got reason to, which you don't.
I wish it got better like they said it did.
When they light up telling me how happy I am, I am a bit crushed and relieved at the same time.
Thank god they don't see through me.
They didn't hear me screaming for him to stop because of the nightmare last night, they didn't hear me begging him to stop the other times either.
It does leave me aching when they don't see it.
But that's just me isn't it?
I'm always the crazy one.
It hurts because I still am the crazy one to everyone it seems.
I'm shaking as I write this.
I'm shaking because I was too drunk for a little bit too long and now I'm not.
I'm shaking because I added another substance to the mix, so graciously.
I'm shaking because I'm angry and scared.
I'm shaking and there's no real reason I wouldn't be.
I wish I could tell you how angry I am.
If I had enough courage I'd tell you that maybe you're not like him.
But that doesn't make you any fucking better.
Those stairs creek, those stairs he walked up are far from silent.
The first few times it's not like I went down without doing anything and everything I could do to stop it.
When that didn't work I learned to take it.
You should have seen it.
How didn't you?
How in this perfect house of yours, this beautiful family yoi created, I suffered for years, and I tell you it was not silent.
It wasn't quiet, like you made it out to be.
You never heard it because you weren't listening to it.
It's cynical in a way that doesn't feel like it could have ever happened.
Didn't you two meet each other at a camp for foster children?
You know those kids whose lives played of the stories of your family that you never saw.
I don't care that you thought it couldn't ever be you, because it wasn't.
It wasn't you who lived in terror.
It was you who didn't see it.

How to stop the shaking
I know to stop my hands from shaking I should stop giving them a reason to.
I shouldn't pour any and every warm drink or pill down my throat.
But it's not that easy is it?
Maybe I wouldn't take any and everything I could if I didn't have reasons to.
I'm not going to pretend this isn't my fault,
I did all of this after all.
But maybe things would be different if I wasn't trying to hide.
If I didn't spend my childhood failing to run from abuse and the eyes, they never seemed to see it.
Maybe if I didn't feel the need to worry if there was another one after me, not just the other one but the one he touched but the one he could hurt tomorrow.
Or the fact that when I talk about the boy I want to hold I am left to worry if they think he made me that way.

Not yet at least
If I could write poems about beautiful boys and roses today I would.
But, the world teaches shame to men like me.
When I think of him I am truly happy, but I can't help but feel guilty.
I can't help wondering if I ever walked down the street holding his hand how many of those passerbys would believe I was going to rot in hell.
When I tell her about him part of me wonders if she thinks it's the abuse that made me this way.
She doesn't.
Nobody would.
Nobody with a heart at least.
When I think about what it would be like to take him to the movies my heart aches a bit.
Because it won't be the same,
Not yet at least.
I could never share a bed with him without wondering what he'd do to me.
It's all so ugly because it's over, but the wound bleeds into everything that's not.