Light bill resurrection

I was accepted into a
PhD program three days ago
and the only family
I have
are talking about
leaving
me

And that’s fine.
I didn’t change my name,
my mortgage,
or my bank account for him,
And I didn’t change my
inability to really feel
for her.
And I guess that makes me
Too hard
Too unbending
Too closed off

Too fake.

They’re not wrong
With my surgeon nose
and my news-ready hair,
the way I like
working, drinking and fucking
but I hate emotion
made them realize
I’m not the one.

I guess they need that
I guess I’ll feel something about them one day

But today,
I just want to cry.
Not for, or with them,
but for my motherfucking self.

Really cry.
Not fake cry or
sympathy cry,

but burn the sorrow out
with something harder than
Peach Crown

Because I used to be a 10th grade
dropout with a heroin mom
who ODd,
and the state
buried her and
gave me the choice of
more foster care or growing the fuck up.

Foster care was too rape-y,
so I grew the fuck up.

Because I used to be 16 years old,
holding the keys to an apartment
with no way to turn the lights on.
I slept in the closet that night
because I was scared.

And because the night I turned 17
I was serving appetizers to
tables in an arm sling
at a hotel bar,
because I was too young
to serve drinks,
but I had to go in
because the light bill
was due.

I couldn’t let the lights go out.

It was the same day I took the
long walk through the
protesters and took the
only life I’d ever
actually be in
charge of.

I did it on my birthday
so it never healed right.

I don’t think those sorts
of wounds should.

But I was waiting tables
high on Darvon
and Coors light
because the lights
we’re about to
get cut off again
and I needed the money.

Because the decisions
were too much
for him,
Because the
mental anguish
of staying
or choosing
was so damn overwhelming
that
he broke my collarbone
on the way out.
I tried to stop him.

But he had to leave.

I guess he needed that.

I needed to change my
dead-baby pad
with my non-dominant hand
on the day I turned 17.

And I’m an
utter narcissist since
by the time I was
20 I looked like the
old bar bitch who’d been
hung up to dry.

I mean, I was.
But still.

No education.
No family.
No future.
A warm six pack
and a crumpled pack of
Marlboro Reds
everywhere I went.
My legacy.

My legacy.

My legacy has a lot
of bootstrap shit,
and some random fucking-my-way-in,
that nobody really gives a damn
about.

I made a name in news.
It’s all the same line of
uncaring shit as
waiting tables,
I just
dress better now.
And I like to dress better.

Because when I was 18
I owned one bra,
which I had to wash in
the sink every night,
and
three changes of clothes,
two of which were
for work

I keep looking
at the acceptance letter.
And remember the darkness of the
night after moving into my first apartment.

Remember the scratch of
the carpet on my cheek
in the closet
in the dark
where
I slept the first night
when I was 16 years old.

Remember the hollow in
my stomach,
convinced that
being
lonely-hungry-scared
in the dark was
permanent.

I guess in a way it was.

And I really want to cry for
the pathetic piece of
shit I was.
I loved her once
and I think
she felt everything.

Everything.

I think she was so
so
afraid of the dark
that keeping the
lights
on
killed her

I want to cry because I believed
I’d have something worthwhile
to share with her
one day
That I could be someone
for her
one day

But none of it means anything

Because

I got accepted to graduate school.
I’m going to be a doctor of philosophy.

And I don’t have
anyone
to tell.

So I came back home,
where a decade ago,
back, when I was a kinder woman,
I left a snail trail
of lust and despair.

I came back to tell someone.
Anyone.

I guess I needed that.


I’ll turn the lights off
on my way out.