How to be a good child
A Poem
How to be a good child,
let your family get away with everything you’d never allow anyone else to do to you. Pain is a budding flower, and you need to water it with their wishes for you to be perfect.
Realize you don’t mask for anyone except your family now. Realize the complications of that. Only call them when you can fake being okay.
Come into consideration of the fact you can’t cry anywhere, so their wish and demand for you to be “less sensitive” so you’d “get over” the shit they say finally came true.
Feel the ventricle of your sensitive side start to leak blood from the decision to stop giving a fuck and to know they won’t be there for you like you are for them.
Never say this to them. Ever. They will tell you you’re ungrateful, and your mother will repeat again what a betrayal your poetry is and what a shitty-ass poet you are.
Never forget the words as they spewed like molten hatred, “you’re shitty ass poetry,” and smile at this memory over time. At least she said it. At least she shed her pretense like a winter coat to tell you what she really thinks of how you write.
Try not to have your skin remove itself from your fascia when people keep saying, “I’d love to have my family read all my writing.” Bite your…
