The Aberration of Youth
We liked to pretend we were dying.
It felt invigorating to keep death close.
Dying assured us we were, in fact, real
to begin with and was sure to invoke
sympathy by pairing all that we loved
with the inevitability of its passing.
We liked to play dead by the sides of the roads.
One time we went as far as to
squirt ketchup on our white t-shirts
hoping a car would stop to help us.
We fantasized being picked up and
nestled in the back seat of a Buick
by unfamiliar, yet caring arms.
We perfected falling down the stairs
when our parents had company over.
We liked to make memorable entrances,
then spring up and take funny bows,
desperate for the acknowledgement
that our very existences were in danger.
We enjoyed pretending we were retarded
by garbling our speech and ramming it
through mishappened mouths,
our faces a rictus of helplessness
readily excusing us from all expectations
and instantly surrounding us with
the unconditional sympathy we craved.
After watching The Miracle Worker
on the late show, for days
we went around wildly
waving our outstretched arms
as we bumped into furniture
feeling our way through
our own make-believe darknesses.
Perhaps if we were blind
we’d have been loved.
We were fond of screaming
in the neighbors back yards.
We excelled at faking vomiting
by vibrating our fingers
down the back of each other’s heads
as if puke were slowly sliding down
the hair onto the napes of the necks.
Sometimes we froze like mannequins
in the aisles of the local Pennies
to spook old ladies and of course
shock the shit out of strangers.
At 10 we began running away from our homes
twice a week, staying away
just long enough to spark guilt in someone.
We were a pathetic ruse.
We liked to walk down streets
smoking fake cigarettes,
blowing clouds of dental powder
through straws with tin foil ends
dipped in red ink.
We lived to make tongues wag.
At 14 we pretended we were witches
by learning rituals and performing spells.
We told friends we cleaned our rooms with magic.
We’d point dead oak tree branches
toward the sky, repeating rhymes
with the intention of flying away.
One time we made bombs
out of scraped off sparklers
and gutted firecrackers, then buried
them in cigar boxes in our backyards
with fuses poking out of the ground.
We lived to light those wicks
and blow up the whole lonely world.
At 15 we drew hair under our armpits
with our mother’s eyeliner pencils
then flirted with older men
we saw in the apartment buildings
across the way.
Couldn’t they see we were now
young and old enough to be valued
for our bodies alone?
We kept wigs in our underwear drawers.
We were known for staining our underpants
with our nocturnal emissions.
Our mother pinned them to
the drapes when she hosted
her bridge clubs in an attempt
to shame and humiliate us.
So we got even by humping our pillows
in the dark.
We changed our rooms around weekly,
once begging our mother to buy
us a leopard skin bedspread.
We were always plotting our escape.
We fell in love with strangers so easily.
We used to walk up to unfamiliar houses
and ask to use the bathrooms
longing for a taste of other lives.
We drew freckles on our faces
with red ink pens.
We touched the end of thermometers
to hot light bulbs
to prove we had fevers.
We died like Garbos in black and white.
Our illnesses solely invented for
staying home from things.
We wore outlandish paisley bell bottoms
our mother had sewn for us.
We crawled through neighbor’s windows
to jack their teenage sons off at night.
We liked squishing marshmallows
between our fingers to make taffy
adding cocoa powder or Tang for pizazz.
At night we’d make prank phone calls
under the cum-stained sheets of our beds.
We fantasized being institutionalized
so that we might be taken care of
for the rest of our lives. In band classes
we pretended to play our instruments
puffing our cheeks in and out to the music.
We danced and sang to records
alone in the subconscious of our basements.
Though we grieved from day one,
what had ever been there to make us sad?
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