Voicemail: 11:08pm (2nd Place)
I promise-
I’m fine
I am, I’ll do my laundry and stay on top of my homework,
I won’t waste everything you’ve-I mean- I -have worked for,
And I am ready
for this next chapter of my life- I mean-
Not a chapter that I wrote for myself but rather
A choose your own adventure that you turned to page 247 of,
Breaking the spine and wrinkling the thick paper cover,
But don’t worry, I’ll be good, I won’t worry about silly
Trivial things like having to slip away every morning to take
Medication that i didn’t ask for and have been taught to feel
Ashamed of and broken as a human for needing, and
mother, don’t concern yourself with the suffocating haze
I will claw through
Every day when I must pretend to be sure of myself
even though the last time you sent me away I was dying and you were scared
now you’re sending me away because I’m just starting to live
and it’s scaring me too,
Mother,
I haven’t gone a day without squeezing my heart to let the blood
water the garden of your expectations full of trees I can’t climb, bushes I can’t jump,
I haven’t gone a day without crushing these white petals
Into tea to soothe your aching, outstretched hands, your pounding brain, your burning wallet,
I haven’t gone a day without climbing this vine of thorns
To pretend like I belong with these children of diplomats and CEOs and
Mother
I am lost and I only time I feel found is
When I’m ignoring the wolves in my belly, screaming to be fed,
But my mind is screaming too,
and I keep sinking and these words are nothing but bubbles
wasting my last breaths
and I just don’t know how to surface without drowning us all.