The ache spreads

For they no longer sleep.

But it’s not the beds,

They weep.

The numbness creeps

To heavy head.

A tear seeps.

Smile instead.

They don’t feel pain.

They don’t feel rain.

They just don’t feel at all,

Such a doll.

No.

Stop.

You’re wrong.

That’s not.

What we’re supposed to be.

But can’t you see?

It’s killing me.

Slowly…

Red stains,

Piercing cries,

Whimpers,

Silent breathing.

A baby,

One to call mine;

A girl,

One to adore.

The bed is empty,

The house quiet,

The birds have left,

She was taken.

My hope,

My love,

My life,

Gone.

Walk the empty

Streets full of pain,

Blades concealed,

Cold on heated skin.

Only a door, a wall,

A world, a conscience

Stand before me, and

I will bring back what is mine.

I feel sick.

There’s a knot in my stomach,

A pounding in my head,

A pressure in my ears,

An ache in my throat.

Is this what it’s like?

To be homesick?

I feel the need to flee

And fly back—or forward,

I don’t know,

Just get me away from here.

But home. What is home?

How can be I be homesick

Yet never feel at home?

Home is not home,

People are not home.

I have no home.

The feeling follows me everywhere;

The emptiness a throbbing reminder

That I must figure it out,

Nothing will magically fill this hole.

Until then I shall live on

With the longing,

One day I will find home.

One day when I am ready.

It’s like how whitecaps miss a loud coastline,

A swell, a surge, alone through vast expanse

Of ocean, deep, dark murk oozing with brine;

Partners of absent cliffs in a strange dance.

Breakers beat erosion rhythms below,

The teeming current is void of all life

As gyres ebb and flood in undertow,

Where pollutants mark the struggle and strife.

Riptide then drift—drift as fluid hands wave

Goodbye, follow the dying ripples far;

To lose the wake and fumble chance to save,

Above no guiding star, only broke spar.

Turn hard to port it’s time to navigate

Away from here, away to a new fate.

Born behind a shadow,

abandoned.

A second option for those—

who could not have

their own.

Pushing past limits

to fill a hole not meant for me.

To be the perfect one,

yet deep down

alone

Do this, do that,

and don't disappoint.

The bar set high over

a pile

of bone

Broken from falling,

each time I miss

or slip.

Who cares?

Jump again,

but the only way

is down.

This is who I am,

who I was raised to be.

Don't ask

me to change.

Unrealistic is not motivating

or inspiring,

yet it brings results

if you ignore your life

of groan.

You can only have one

they said;

Make it a boy

they said.

We millions were not boys.

Out fermented hands reaching

up

and down the ground littered with us,

Voices crying out

silently, not heard, not seen, wrapped

in plastic

singed at the edges.

Lambs led to sacrifice,

born only for that.

So many lost

with hearts stilled

long before true beating—

beating—

beating—

beating—

And silence.

Who is left? I am

here.

One of millions

to find a path

unwanted or forbbiden,

different.

Our forgotten generation spread

like sheer, thin plastic

the same covering

our fellow sisters,

our fallen sisters,

little angels fly away.

I'd let the little angels fly away.

I had always known

where I was born.

But then the clouds broke—

into an endless blue—

blue of an ocean, separating

a baby

a mother.

Another mother now loves another's,

cradling

a stranger who would be me.

Approached the gate

to a park. The gate

to an orphanage. The gate

which was yet another mother's arms

wrapped around a trembling me.

It might have been cruel to leave

the first time

way long ago. And now I was to leave

again.

Again, I become a daughter.

Is it enough now? Will I be enough?