#oceanwriting

Can we take a moment? One to appreciate the depth that live so deep below the moonlit tides?

I got caught smoking in a movie theater parking lot

Blood was in my cheeks and my head I think my lies were almost believable if I

Wasn’t stumbling with my feet past my tongue

But fuck if after I finished hyperventilating in the backseat of my mom’s car

I didn’t wildly laugh my way through three lanes of traffic into a drive through

It’s just so hard to feel young when resignation is the backdrop to all sorts of future dreams

I’m sixteen now and drugs seem like a good way to forget

The feeling of sitting soaking wet in a tub while the water drains from thighs to ankles

When the air around me is warm but some slice of a thought and the run of dirty water

Leaves gooseflesh on the inside of my skin

My therapist says I’ve grown too used to the flinch

I’ve always believed childhood is more insidious than people say

Who else to ruin me now who else to always pitch my mother’s voice louder than it really is

Until my calves and pinkie toe strain

There’s something about a road with all the same houses too many clean streetlamps

How many people are just sitting in their rooms waiting on the right moment to start

I think some part of my childhood is the same way

Imprinting the part of me who has seen this story go cold before

So maybe it’s not the flinch I’m used to but too many nights without it

What happens when I am stripped down and honest

Not just standing naked but looking at the leftover indents on my skin all the red lines where my nails have dragged

I think that’s less human than the man who runs his dog down the same path everyday replaying those straight society thoughts

Some reckless energy is building in my knees and I’m looking for a way to get rid of it

Before I throw all those back tracked first tastes of dumb decisions up and grow too used to the flinch

- Health We Excess (Eutrophic) ||  LAU B. © 2017