(tried to post this last night, but I think Tumblr was having some problems, so here goes.)

I am in my childhood bedroom, the red room of my parents’ house. I do not know how to fix this place, and so instead I will stuff my mouth with garlic, I will carry loads of paper from the closet to the door. To the patient down the stairs, what can I say that I have not already heard, and scoffed at? Dear child, what have we done. Are we so broken that no wholeness ever offered itself to you, ripe and joyous? The blood of this house has a biting tongue, despite the heavyweighted rope of its heart’s affections. I see all of us choking on the barbs, barbs of quick poison, of a critic’s easy hand. 

I have been ill at ease lately, at most times and within and without most buildings, but here in this place a thousand habits turn their ugly heads and swallow me. I am often too lazy and too bitter to stave them off. But know, I do, I do, I do wish you kindness, all. There are many things my movements turn to by instinct–perhaps kindness is not one of these. 

Losing vision on this, my adolescent bed. The last time it bore me you were here beside me, you, your shoreline eyes an anchor against memory, your warm hands on white cloth holding  me to who I am, not who I was. But yet, but yet I idly dream I will clean these oily suitcases out, and my breath will filter all this ugly air.