Go to college to learn

surgery, neurology,

law, medicine,

finance, teaching, and so forth.

Technical arts, maybe.

Those who truly make it

or have made it

on any level

with writing prose

or fiction

or poems

or contemporary literature

will do it out of a mixture of stubbornness, compulsion, and fire.

Past an understanding of English, school was

an arduous nightmare for me.

Pulled from the system(s)

by sudden parental death,

school was a logical waste

for me at grade 11

employment eclipsed

education

because the streets were

even worse than

the classrooms

so I worked shit

jobs

a dropout with a dream

I read voraciously

and wrote like

a madman

and after two decades

of being out in the wind

or in cars or old vans

or in apartments

or rented rooms

or shit monthly

and weekly

hotels across the country

the hard work paid off

the hard work at home

after the job had eaten my

flesh for 10 hours

but the jobs fed

the pages

and right now the rain

falls in California

and the steak and eggs

are over-easy

and rare just like

I like them cooked

and even though I'm

in a diner on my

phone

and not crazy

about this poem

I didn't write it

to be anti-education

or pro-anything

this poem

is

cautionary.

beneath this barricade of broken bones

behind this shroud of scarred skin

stuffed inside organs

spilling out of arteries

there is a garden of wildflowers

watered by the tears I didn't cry

growing from the depths

of my undiscovered soul

housed by the greenhouse

of my abandoned lungs

there are vines overtaking my spine

I feel the itch of soil behind my eyes

and I know no one will see

the beauty within this skeleton

I wish I could tell you

a tale of magic

with dragons and broadswords

with bravery and chivalry

but truly I'm a coward

who clipped her own wings

and used her own talon

to undo the seam of her wrist

and carved out this wasteland

of resentment and pain

After we departed for home, I couldn't help but feel as if I were abandoning the other patient or shall I say "resident"whom I had shared six long months of pure agony and misery with, knowing what we had tried to do to ourselves. As I sank into the back seat of the car among bags of all my favorite foods, a honey dew included, that Mom purchased to ease me back into the familiarity of home, I thought about the doctor saying that one reconstructive surgery would repair the nerve damage and shallow hole in my face, but I felt no operation could repair the unforgivable act of a self-inflicted gunshot to your own head.

"A deep sadness had over taken me"; that's what I told the psychiatrist. The sadness had been roaring in my mind like a lion so much so that I took my uncle's antiquated Smith and Wesson with a tinge of rust on the front sight and held it unsteadily to my head. I really didn't want to kill myself; I just wanted the sadness to end.

We finally arrived home, and my Mom closed the garage as she parked the car. I opened the rear car door and grabbed my bags to enter the house. As I entered the kitchen, a familiar sadness flooded my mind, and I had a deja vu moment that suggested, home is not a place to which you can alway return.

You poured salt

Into open wounds

Leaving me to rust

An over ripened honey dew

On concrete

are my dreams to you

Smashing them apart

Until they come unglued

Vulnerable am I to you

I am a new born calf

You are a lion

Feasting

Tearing me to shreds

An unforgivable act

Leaving me black and blue

And every apology

Is déjà vu

For it will happen again

Repeatedly

Until I'm dead

Because you are a resident

Inside my heart

Who refuses to leave

I refuse to evict

You were always the thing that was going to kill me.

People have different ways of letting their lives slowly die, and you, would be the reason on my autopsy. You chose a cigarette to be the cause of your death. Bitter, yet left you with a certain satisfaction I could not give you. No matter how low that lilac dress was, or how much mango Shea butter I wore, you would not let me in. Even after you would slip my panties off, you would light a cigarette to keep your passion burning, because I was just not enough. You were like a porcupine with the way you kept me out with sharp jabs and pointed looks that would make my heart melt even though those things were not intended to bring me to my knees. God, you were the worst. But I don't think I could ever stop loving the way your cigarette light danced on the wall. Even after you've broken my heart.

suspended

suffocating

I have survived

but it's stifling

how many strive

to see me crumble