Poems

Childhood Memories

It's tiring to be scared of the dark.

Especially if the dark is inside of you.

How could you run away from yourself without dying or taking medication?

Popping pills like the smarties you ate when you were five.

Bleeding out apple juice and laughter and the kindness in your smiles from before you got a chance to realize what the world was like.

And you wonder-

Why did you so badly want a taste?

Like the broccoli you refused to eat, and yet it tastes better than the reality on your plate.

Now it's all
Cakes made of xanax tabs and
Brownies with crushed up sleeping pills in them and
Cookies laced with the serotonin your brain refuses to make on its own.

And none of it is sweet.

Artificial help is bitter, like the taste of copper infused black coffee on a Sunday morning.

Prosthetic plastic like the newspaper no one ever reads.

And you can't even take one bite of the sugarless sweets because of how reminding it is of when you used to eat.

The hollow feeling in your stomach resonates with the thought of the lemonade you sold during summer break when you were seven.

Orange brick wasn't a prison yet.

Tied down with the ropes from the two story mall jungle gym that was set up when you were just barely old enough to remember.

So fearless then, climbing higher than the other kids to prove yourself, make daddy proud as you smiled at him through a set of teeth minus one, as it had just fallen out and you got five dollars under your pillow.

So imaginative and full of wonder. What happened? When?

You think of little you. Younger you. Alive you, naive you, stupid you, inexperienced idiot who hadn't learned a damn important thing you, unprepared for the future you.

Happy you.

They don't understand how someone feels this way. Or why. They'd cry if they realised it was them. How could it ever be.

Drained out of color, like the bubblebath they take every night, yellow ducky and smell of baby soap down the pipes with their giggles.

If only they could hug you. They can't.

It's too disappointing.

All happy things hold pain.

Summer brings sunburns,
Autumn, falling leaves,
Winter, melting snowmen,
Spring, gloomy rains.

And you get older.

The wonder leaves.

And you learn.

But you begin to think-

Maybe it wasn't for the best.

No.

Just because you can't eat doesn't mean you're not fed, because the darkness you're so rightfully afraid of consumes you.

You think of all the pancakes you ate, and the friends you had, and the crafts you made.

The phrase "Lights out," is still the same, though.

It's too dark. Covers pulled up to your chin, tears in your eyes, like the baby you somehow still are despite the passage of time.

You think-

"I can't see.

In a way,

They can't either.

Maybe-

Just maybe-

They won't notice if I leave."