Home is where the hurt is.

There is no place like home
yet, sometimes,
home is where the brand of poison
that can kill you
is manufactured.

There is no place like your bed
where you close your eyes
and pretend you don’t have to go anywhere.
And yet, sometimes,
your own sheets are drenched
by your darkness.

There is no place like your heart
yet, sometimes,
your heart is the raging advocate
for the things that hurt.
It urges you to touch the burning stove
even if it knows it’s hot.

There is no place like yourself
and yet, sometimes,
you spin the tangled webs
that lead to your undoing.
You are predator and prey
for those who are watching.

There is no place like your mind
and yet, your mind is the sword
hanging over your head.
You pronounce your own death
and call for a thousand cuts
knowing you can’t stand it.

There is no place like your head.
But when it is the abyss
swallowing your soul
how do you run
and where do you hide?

Smelling White Tulips for Catharsis

Like the soil that nourished the petals to bloom,
my mind is barren and cracked.
I thirst for the tiniest drop of hope –
my Garden of Eden, envisioned,
my wistful longing.

No sooner have I tried to water down the hankering,
the desire for this wretch to be bigger than myself,
I relent to the persistent roots that ground me,
keep me where I am
though I want to move.

I smell the white tulips and know
the scent, contrived from reflections of myself,
will bring me catharsis.
I still know who I am,
however much I don’t know
who I want to be.

I wait for the day
the white petals will fall off,
the leaves will rot,
the roots will dry up.
I wait for the day I can plant my roots somewhere else.

But until that day, I wear my pollen crown –
sometimes, reeking sickly-sweet,
sometimes, stinking like a fish,
sometimes unconcerned as I keep my essence to myself.
I turn to my white tulips for catharsis.

Dance to Liberty

It starts as a whimper,
forty pennies shoved down your throat –
payment for your silence.
As with medicine, you taste the bile
but you keep it down
valuing its life source.

It starts as an inaudible whisper
that even your ears can’t hear.
You catch yourself mid-sentence,
knowing you can’t cry wolf
for the thirty-third time.

It starts as the emptiness
you feel thriving
at the pit of your stomach,
slowly breathing itself
onto your pores.

You have sung yourself
songs of survival
to keep the darkness away.
But it is lacking
for it gives just enough
and never a drop more.
For you to open your eyes,
but not to look around or gaze at the sun.

You sway along
to the rhythm of your mundane,
while also carefully picking
at pieces of yourself.
An inch of flesh for every reason
you ought to swim in your own mediocrity.

Sometimes songs change their tempo
as they get closer to the end.
Dissatisfied and bored
by their tired, old routines.
The beat picks up;
you learn to dance along to it.

It starts out as a song of survival,
the stink of resignation to your fate
permeating the very air you breathe,
stamping itself onto the tips of your fingers,
so everything you touch smells like it.
But it picks up, slowly, driven by a hunger.
Teaching steps unsteady, unfocused,
but galloping away from what the soul says is wrong.

This is how one dances towards liberty.