I know that I do not belong here.

I need to be strong and not let them know how afraid I am.

I am strong during the day, but at night I cry.

The tears pour out of me.

The melting remains of my cold life.

Pouring out of me they saturate the pillow I sleep on.

That pillow that is not my own.



These tears have no right to be here!

They, the outsiders, tell me I am a trooper,

but no I am a coward

because I cry,

and because I am shaking as I write this.

A cancer that rips and tears at my soul,

digesting it with my own mind.

I am dying of it,

and sometimes I just want to stand

in front of a million people

and scream at the top of my lungs.

I want it to hurt,

to rip at my throat.

I want to taste the sickness of my blood,

and feel it sliding down the back of my tongue.

I am so tired of being passed around

to people who don't want me.

These are places I don't belong.

Living out of that suitcase that is not my own.



Depending on a man I do not know,

but dreaming, desiring the family that I have.

The family that is lost in my heart that is in her fist.

The worst part is the nightmares,

not of monsters

but of the unshielded truth.

They sneak into my head and rape my conscience

of all reality.

They make me desperate,

and sometimes I awaken from them expecting to wake

in a spill of urine, like a bride on a bed of rose petals.

Sometimes, I don't awaken from them at all.

It is at these moments when I want to be a rock,

because rocks don't cry

and rocks don't melt,

and rocks know where they belong.

I reach for him

because he can decipher the instructions

and he can speak for me,

because he knows me that well.

He is willing to save me from myself,

and I think he may be able to.

Someday he will know how much I love him.

But all I feel when I reach is the cold steel frame

of that bed that is not my own.

I am so afraid of what tomorrow will bring,

or what it will not.

So much to say here,

but when it is important the words don't form.

Oh, but the pencil it flies across the paper,

and when it is done I feel like I will throw up.

In that toilet that is not my own.



I hope when the judge asks me,

the words will come.

I hope I don't get sick on the witness stand.

How can I hold together

when everyone is pulling on me from different directions?

My life as I knew it is over,

because she has lost her mind,

and I have not.

I do not know what tomorrow will bring.

I do not know if I possess the strength I will need

to decide:

Whose toilet I will be sick in.

Whose bed I will steal because I am company.

Whose snore I will hear

before sleep finally seals me in its envelope,

alone with my nightmares.

I want a home.

I want a family.

I want something to hold up,

high so everyone can see, and I'll finally say



"Look, this is my own!"