Because
sneezing my emotions onto the fibers of your
Kleenex
isn’t working, I’ve spent my days punching
mailboxes,
and taking victory laps around childhood
graveyards.
I know you think I resemble a Sour Patch
Kid,
that my thoughts are just silly string. Maybe my
brain
twitches too much and maybe I was born inside
of
a teardrop. I’m all passion. But to me, you are the sun
and
I’m hanging my thoughts on a clothesline for you.
If
I told you to disentangle our straw house, if I told you
that
I feel like a puddle that is gliding towards a sewer,
what
would you say? If I asked you to set fire to the world
using
only the warmth of our hands, would you do it?
*
Yesterday,
I became so angry that I ate a quesadilla. Then I
smashed
my desk with a snow globe. I once cried for three
days
about a purple butterfly kite that refused to fly. Weeks
later,
I sobbed at our toaster for burning my optimism,
and
when you called me unstable, I kicked our floor pantry
just
to prove you right. It was inevitable. You would spit me
out
as if I was a watermelon seed. You would ask me three
times
a day how I felt about broken backspaces, but my eyes
were
already decomposing. Days expired. I was the rotting Jack
O’
Lantern left outside our door. Every time you told me a
truth,
I used a magnifying glass to find all of your potholed
lies.
Eventually, I fell silent watching the image of you,
dad,
melt like the icicles that later formed on our house
gutters.
I tried to hold them once, but they only burned my hands.