Heavily Rooted

There are few people in the world who know me… like you know me.
Because you are blood of my blood
Everything you have felt, I still feel.
We are immortal, infinite; time will not wilt between us. Distance cannot pry space inside.

I carry a piece of you inside of me,
You carry most of me.

You are growing up and I am growing old,
As young as I once was.

I am
Happy you are happy
It’s long past overdue for you.

When I was young, and you still a baby,
We were forced to grow up.
The sound of you crying still echoes in
My head. You didn’t understand why
No one believed us. I didn’t know how
To keep you safe.

Remember the feel of my hands over
Your ears? The TV blaring, stereo on
max? Pressed up against my chest?
the door didn’t break

You pick up where I leave off.

Let me explain:
I was six the first time,
that made you three,
and when we cried, "wolf! wolf! wolf!"
the towns people laughed
at our stringy, lice-ridden, hair
hand-me-down clothes,
perfume trash, we were young when he started this.

I cannot say out loud
what they probably need to hear
to understand the creases in our souls
the shadows in the back of our mouths
the raw palms of these hands

you are only one of the sisters who always lived with me
but you're the only one who is mine;
'cause I’ve never hurt so bad for someone else
and not regretted the bruises scars tears

but then again, I don't regret much of anything,
except,
we still see him around town sometimes
which means he's still breathing
the air we share

he took everything we had;
there's something wrong here,
we're playing hide-n-seek against
a ghost,
I should have done a better job...

because we still grimace at the laughter
and the ease at which they say “home”
ours doesn’t have windows or doors
a roof or floors,
making us envious of the homeless
when we were trying to survive

life, I called it,
Where everything died
And we ate the ashes
to try and fill ourselves up
With something that might understand
how we felt inside.
Because here, we owned no pretty thing,
And found that the sheets were always dirty,
Our hair.. uncombed
And most days, our teeth, un-brushed.

There was a foul taste in my mouth every time
Someone said “hey you can’t win all the time”
Because we’re driving like we can outrun these memories
And I’m thinking, yeah, the headlights look especially beautiful
On a night like this:
You shake,
I’ll hold you together.

winter time always makes things worse,
when death is everywhere we look
and at nighttime we can see our breath,
it’s alright to be cold…
sometimes.

But three times we were kicked out in this season,
and for three months we slept whenever we could lay down
heads in each other’s laps, leaning on each other for support
lying to anyone who asked questions
most of your childhood
you repeated what I whispered into your ear

there are some things children should not have to remember
but I hold onto them
so you can forget.
And
I’m sorry that I can’t fix things that truly matter,
or when I needed to the most
but mostly,
I’m just sorry everything in your life comes back to this.

our family painted the front door blue,
All this sadness behind a deadbolt