When I was a little boy

My father told me

You will never be a doctor

Because you suck at science.

When I was 8 years old

I scraped my knees on expectations

That were never my own

And looked for home

In the smile of every stranger

That didn’t shout at me.

Every absence of a fist

Felt like a kiss

Until I learned that words

Carried their own poison.

I learned to build a home in books

To crawl into the worlds between letters

And drink them in until I could forget…

I cannot tell you of my childhood

Too many memories are like sand

I grab at smoke that settles

Like grains of time too swift.

I’d stop to smell the roses

But her hands were covered in that scent

And everytime I blink

I can’t erase her laughter from the pain.

Don’t ask me to feel at home

When walls have only ever kept me out

Kept me in cycles of forgetting

That life is actually living…

Instead of waiting for an end.