~Sometimes, I write poems~ Weeds I honestly do not know how you expect me to do this How do you expect me to do the things you were never brave enough to do? How do you know the words I scream in the car aren't entirely true? Why do you keep trying to beat me and burn me and push me and mold me Into something I'm not? I don't need to hear you preach to the congregations as if we've all forgotten About Him, about our sins, about how in the end we'll “surely win” And the demons that guard my heart will just leave if I let the world in And maybe I should just smile, just eat, just dance, just be happy Maybe I should just go back to being the little girl who used to make you proud But I can't smile when the weight of the things I'm too scared to address tug at the corners of my mouth I can't eat when my stomach is full of the words you spit in my face, hoping to “rehabilitate” me I can't dance because I never could. I've spent my whole life stumbling over my own feet And choking back words that I'm far too afraid to speak How could you love me? You loved the girl I used to be I murdered that girl right after you killed her dreams And together, we managed to suppress everything that was once beautiful in her and in her world And we burnt it down for a cheap hell that we could have seen just as easily on cable TV Go ahead. Yell at me again. That's all you've ever been good at. Tell me I'm wrong and impractical and unpredictable and how every song I write is a cry for attention And tell me how every fire you ignite will send me in the right direction You are not God I don't know who God is anymore But I'm looking And you can be damn sure that when I find Him We will both be so very far away from you Do you remember when I was a little girl And I used to make you happy in the way I would speak My words flying off of my tongue like the way the bees would fly in wildflower meadows? Clever girl with a stupid heart Little know-nothing turned now-nothing who would beg you to never let the room get to dark Because I knew, I fucking knew that the monsters were hiding with me, waiting to suffocate my screams Who would have guessed that those monsters turned out to be me? I used to sit in the yard outside when I was six while you were cutting grass And every time you passed me by, I would beg you, please Don't cut the flowers because they make the yard pretty And you told me to move, told me that they were just weeds Get off your fucking knees and stand tall like the walls of this man-made house that you're supposed to feel safe inside of And I want you to do the exact same thing that I did And I want you to grow up and get married and work a job that you hate for money you don't deserve so that you can support kids who won't love you because you're never around And, being the kid I was, I didn't know how to stand down I found the weeds today while searching for my God And I found them not as I stood tall But as I was crying on my knees and begging for someone to save me from the air that forced me to breathe I don't want to anymore And now you're asking questions without rights to the answers And I'm trying so hard to tell you That I don't know anymore
