father's shoulders
and nearly tripping in my mother's heels
aching calves from peeking over counters
and embellished knee scrapes
and feigned sleep upon arrival
"ask your mother"s
and desperate desires to stay up past nine
and poorly pixelated movies on repeat
having to jump up to reach my parents bed
and taut pig tails yanking at my scalp
because now it's all just sneaking into school bathrooms for a smoke
and crying alone to old photos
and locked doors
and texts that read "working tonight"
and phone calls in place of it all
and no more "mom and dad's room"
it's not a house, it's houses
it's not aches from too tight pony tails
but from empty panic attacks
and screens instead of soundless sleep
and i know i never had all that i say i did
but i miss it
even if it never really existed
and now here we are again
with sad love songs looped
as i stare up at a spinning ceiling fan
and think about it all
in its hyperbolic glory
i think about missing naive eyes
and never fully comprehended "i love you"s
not that i'll ever get it back
but just to relish in the fact
that i once had something normal
and asphyxiate to the revelation that now
i have nothing but this pitied self
