The Piano in my Mother's Home

Life Itself
To go home early, every time.
To leave, to get up and run.
To know what it was like to not be yourself.
And be wrapped in a cocoon, a shell
so deep you couldn't tell where it began,
where it ended.
To know the mountains so deeply,
every groove and divide
you built yourself up on.
To write and not know what
you say, to try. To try not to
be angry.  To try not to be sad,
always, always.
To go home early, every time.
To rise and not know what the air
feels like and, to try
anyways.
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A bunch of poems, because I'm feeling a multitude of the feelings and not feeling like I have any right to those feelings, but still having them anyways.  A bunch of poems because it is so hard to have to know and to explain always, to justify and analyze and be the English major I am.  A bunch of vague, open-ended poems that are just as unsure as I am.  They will not tell you my darkest secrets.  They will not tell you my lightest secrets.  They will not tell you anything you don't already know.  They will exist, and they will be an extension of me and they will not make me feel better.  They will not make me feel better.
A bunch of poems because I'm done trying to explain how I feel, why I feel, what I feel.  I'm privileged and I'm disadvantaged and I'm terrified of what's happening.  I. Am. Terrified.  A bunch of poems because I am terrified.  They will not make me any less scared.  They will exist as a testament of how scared I was and at the end I will not triumph because that is not the dominant narrative.  I might not be okay, I might never be okay, but they will exist.
A bunch of poems, because I'm tired of being the kind of person who writes poems.
A bunch of poems, and they will not make me feel better.
A bunch of poems, and they will not make me less scared.
A bunch of poems. They will exist.
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A recurring nightmare,
funeral processions which carry me
on their shoulders. Slowly, slowly.
My gods peel off their skins,
pick out their bones and strip
straight down to their atoms.
A never-ending string of
unworthiness and then I can
slip into (un)consciousness, because
Existence and resistance,

sound too much alike.
Love and death exist in the same sphere,

And god, I've loved you forever.
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It's been a long week.  It's been a long month.  It's been a long year.
"No one knows me, like the piano
In my mother's home."