I do not like the stinging feeling left by tears
I hope I do not drink hiccup drink in front of my children
I hope I do not become like my mother
If I do, I hope I do not have children
I do not like the stinging remnant in my throat
It makes it hard to speak
It's already hard to speak
Unless my words are communicated by speech between pen and paper

I am lonely all the time
I do not know why
Because people always try to tell me not to be
You can't turn loneliness off like a forgotten rusty spigot
It seeps in and settles like smog on cities
It does not go away
It makes it hard to breathe
Breathing is hard enough anyway
When you're lonely and don't see a reason to

I miss you already
I wish I'd done more
I need you here
I am lonely

I wish I'd had a better mother
So that I would not be lonely
So that I would not latch on to teachers and parents of my friends
Like a leech I am a leech and people don't like leeches
People don't like me
I think I try too hard
I think I show too much love and I am awkward and confused because I was never taught how to express it properly
Thank you mom
It always comes back to you
Why is that
Why won't you go away
I do not like you and I do not plan to
And you torment me every second of every day like a clock in the dead of night
Tick tock tick tock tick tock make it stop
I am the cuckoo and you are the clock
And you're the cuckoo too
But I am not a drunk and I never will be
I am not a hateful person unless it's you
I am not not a hateful person
I am trapped in a house by a dictator who craves control over my thoughts and actions and words and no you may not have any of those because they are mine
Mine for the giving
You're always for the taking
And I can be very selfish sometimes

"You don't know when to shut up, do you"
Silence
"Do you"
Silence
"DO YOU"
I do not understand you
You do not understand silence but
Maybe you do because it can be so loud
Louder than you
I like silence because it is louder than you
Silence is your enemy I think
You choose instead to punctuate peace with angry screams and yells and
Bellows like a furnace and billowing choking smoke
And fire that burns everyone
You would rather be roaring
Than warming

What if I'm never able to shake you
What if I'm always going to be haunted by you
Because I walk around in my state of silence and I feel like a ghost
No one can hear my mind when I keep it to myself and I do
Because I was taught to fear myself by you

Stream of consciousness
I've never written it before
I do not know where I'm going and I'm trying not to backspace
I do not think you could write stream of consciousness
Because you have no conscience
No they are not related
But maybe they are
Your consciousness is wobbly I think
Wobbly like the steps you take and the words you speak
Wobbly like indistinct and not all the way there like you always are
Where do people go when they have nowhere to go
How do you think when you have no thoughts
How do I have so many thoughts
How did I come from you
Why did I have to come from you

I love my English teacher more
So much more
In fact, I think if I were drunk like you and walked in the tumblr room with all the people I'd ever loved
I'd fall into her arms
She gives the warmest hugs and lets me cry into the fabric of the shirt above her shoulder
And she loves the way I write
She loves my words and gives me happy faces on papers and A's when the valedictorian of my class gets B's and I smirk
Because I pulled an all-nighter the night before and he spent a week perfecting his
But I do not think he has pain so his writing is not from the source of the art of it
But pain is another story
I love stories
I love the ones you tell
About how your parents did not graduate high school
And how you and your three siblings would come home from school to find one can of beans
Because there was no money to buy more
And how your sister dropped out and got pregnant
And how your brothers dropped out and became like your parents
And how you saw the pattern and wanted out wanted better wanted more
And how you pushed yourself with no one to help
And graduated salutatorian of your class
And went to college on scholarships
And became a teacher and went to school again to be a better teacher
I love your stories
About how much you love your three precious children
And how your dog is named Leia because you love Star Wars and have your DE students write an essay on each movie
I love your sarcasm and your realness
And the remnants of the 80s in your hair
I love your smile and your laugh and how you tear up sometimes when talking about Shakespeare and Gatsby and Hawthorne
I love these stories because of you
But I cannot take you with me when I go to the dungeon of this house
When I need you most I only have her
And sometimes I find myself waking up from a dream of hugging you
And sometimes I sit and think about you and how different things would be if you were my mother and that is not normal and it is not okay
But am I to blame?
I am not normal
And I think you like me anyway
And my loneliness will not go away

Mother, I'm still trying to fill your hole
I think I will always seek it even when I do not think
I cannot fill it with my dusty collection of the second moms in my attic
And the one I'm focused on now will eventually join them and be replaced
And you do not know how much I hate that and how much it hurts to suck the tolerance of me out of people
I cannot fill it with alcohol because I made a promise to myself and my future
And I cannot fill it with you
I wish someone would tell me what I'm supposed to do

You drink alcohol and I drink loneliness
And I do not know which is worse