ⁱᵐ ᶠᵃˡˡⁱⁿᵍ ᵃᵖᵃʳᵗ ʳⁱᵍʰᵗ ⁱⁿ ᶠʳᵒⁿᵗ ᵒᶠ ʸᵒᵘʳ ᵉʸᵉˢ

Happiness scares me because there is always a price to pay afterwards. ..

From One

who says, “Don’t cry.

You’ll like it after a while.”

and Two who tells you thank-you

after the fact and can’t look at your face.

To Three who pays for your breakfast

and a cab home

and your mother’s rent.

To Four

who says,

“But you felt so good

I didn’t know how to stop.”

To Five who says giving your body

is tough

but something you do very well.

To Six

Who smells of tobacco

and says “Come on, I can feel that

you love this.”

To those who feel bad in the morning yes,

some feel bad in the morning

and sometimes they tell you

you want it

and sometimes you think that you do.

Thank heavens you’re resetting

ever setting and resetting

How else do you sew up the tears?

How else can the body survive?

Loving you was like going to war, I never came back the same…

When I say that I am afraid of being my father or making mother’s mistakes , I am greeted with the old saying , the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as if I am destined to be just like them solely because I am a product of them. I want to tell them that the apple can roll away. That it can hit the ground running and drift away with the creeks stream. That it can be picked up by gentle hands and placed somewhere different , a better place where the apple is polished and admired and painted like its art. The apple still did come from the tree, they’ll argue.

But it can feel different , be different.

The apple doesn’t have to go far in order to be nothing like the rest of the tree. My exterior may look like theirs but I am not filled with their rot.