In my family, we have one rule;
Don’t talk about it.
Most of the time it works out pretty well for everyone;
It helps us avoid awkward questions
My parents never had to explain where babies come from
We hardly ever have arguments
My parents do not panic when I come home late
I don’t get a phone call when I don’t come home at all
All my friends think that I have the fun parents
From an outsiders point of view
We don’t look like a dysfunctional family

My friends look at my parents and see cool
But I look at my parents and see a cold shoulder
So huge I am swallowed whole by its shadow,
I sit huddled in my room
Slowly freezing to death
While they have so many matches
That they cannot hold them all in their hands,
But I have been taught that I am not allowed to ask for a single one,
I have been taught that I should sooner cut out my tongue
Than tell anyone how cold I am

But this silence is all my family has ever known,
So when things started to get bad we stuck to the rule;
We don’t talk about the fact that I started skipping meals
So my siblings all had enough food to eat,
We don’t talk about the alcohol
That keeps going missing from my parents liquor cabinet,
We don’t talk about the fact that my parents drink enough
To need an entire liquor cabinet,
We don’t talk about the way the debt collectors
Have been calling our house at least five times every day
For the past three and a half months,
Instead, every time the phone rings
We sit there avoiding eye contact in complete silence,
Shame pooling in the pits of our stomachs,
None of us wanting to place blame
And none of us willing to accept it,
They have a knack for calling during supper time
So last month we just stopped eating meals together

We don’t talk about how more often than not
My little sister comes home from school crying,
We don’t talk about the fact that my little brother
Got his two front teeth kicked out
By a little boy whose parents didn’t teach him
How to do anything other than hate and hate and hate,
We don’t talk about my older brothers drug problem
Because if we don’t give it a name then it isn’t real,
He’s not addicted, he can stop any time he wants to,
He just doesn’t want to,
We are not enough of an incentive to make him want to live,
We don’t talk about the scars covering my arms
Instead, I come home to find a jar of concealer on my desk
And it says more than my family ever will,
It says you are drawing too much attention to yourself
It says your brokenness is too loud
It says you ought to be ashamed of yourself
It says this is almost as bad as breaking the rule,
I have learned to apply the make up so perfectly
That no one can tell how cold I am

This house is so big, and so empty,
When no one else is here I turn the tv up as loud as it will go
And listen to the people talk
Just so I can hear something other than silence,
When telemarketers call I pick up the phone
And recite my poems down the line,
They always hang up before I get to the end
But sometimes they listen to the beginning
And that’s more than I can say for my family,
I wonder if anyone else in this house knows
That we are all fading away in different ways
That we have made ourselves into ghosts and echos,
This haunted house is the only home I’ve ever known,
And yet, I know that if I were to fade away completely
No one would even say goodbye.