She's Leaving Home

I’m their daughter

so I love them

It’s my home

so I stay there

It’s my culture

so I sew my mouth

It’s my circumstance

so I resine to reside

I am a parent to my parents, to myself, to my sisters, my brothers.

I am not worth attention and am taught not to seek it, not to seek it

I am heir to carving into myself the things of myself I despise

I am wrong

So I stiffen, seal off

I am reclusive

So I aquaint doleful edges of the mind

I am weary of life

So I romance escape

I wither

So my spark rusts away

I have pupils shaped like nooses, my skin scarred and marred

I have no fervor for living; it is normal to me and I accept it as fate

I am aware of the future but can’t see beyond a year or two’s limit

I age

So I leave

It’s new

So I awake

I am not watched

So I unstitch my mouth

I am free to think

So I wander paths light and dark

I am a missing piece from a box of missing pieces

I tumble through schools of pieces that fit and don’t disconcert

I see my incompatibility with the pieces outside home, as it was at home

I amble alone

So I disconnect

I wither

So my friends come

I question

So I look back to home

I see I can’t be there

So I concede to be apart

I am speaking without flinching or stopping my tongue

I am breathing without tearing enmity from my throat

I am in a family that is not my family but are more than my blood ties

I am healing

So I still weep

I am an individual

So my wings start to regrow

I am straining to sight light

So I don’t take a stumble as a doomed fate

I am alive

So I live like I’m going to stay