TW: A brief mention of suicidal Ideation.

The prose poem where the narrator explains his nervous nature.

Listen, this is important. I was/am a very nervous person.

I was terrified the world was going to end every night while I was sleeping. I would turn the same prayer over and over and over, that the world would not end, and I would wake up. And once I was so nervous that my family was going to Hell that I vomited in the shower. I prayed that God would take me instead. I told him that I would gladly take any of their places in eternal damnation.

What kind of ten-year-old thinks of that?/What did that church do to me?

I had seizures when I was fourteen. The side effects of anti-seizure medication can be suicidal ideation and aggression. All the typical teenage angst complicated by a condition that robbed me of physical control and a medication that twisted my thoughts further.

A hammer drives a nail into the soft wood of a sapling. Use the hammer to wrench it out/the tree grows around it.

The summer my seizures started, my grandpa asked me to work with him renovating foreclosed houses. Now, I wonder if she asked him for help. When we got to the last piece of plywood, or drywall, he’d always say “Is that the one we’re looking for?”

He has taught me so much.

We spoke a communal, secret language and sometimes I fear that time has eroded it. But that’s

just my nature.

How many times must I put you to death? (The abyss and rebirth)

the boy sees his shadow

and wonders

who is real

him or the silhouette burnt

into the Walmart parking lot

/

my mother

be softer, start over

_

mom told a story

the other day about my sister

as a child and she full-on belly-laughed,

how much life was written into her, her laugh

i wept

i saw again that she was living

for the first time too

Where the narrator rolls the rock up the cliff unaware/aware that it will break into small pebbles and slip downward for the first time/again.

I tell mom that I am angry about everything/everything

and she listens as my thoughts whip out uncontrolled/practiced

i have had little/plenty of time to think

she gives me advice that I don’t/do ask for

a mother’s curse/gift to her son

she has/I have made mistakes

who offers atonement?

someone must/can I stitch a different me together from

from the shattered parts?

Inspired by:

“Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find the river of peace or the highroad to the soul's destination." The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) by Joseph Campbell. Print.