Carly's Song

Face in my hands
Eyes on the floor,
Here I am again, I think
Alone with the thoughts of who I used to be
That I have been afraid to face
For quite some time.
But your words
On notes of a piano playing
Have inspired me just enough
To look at all that I've forgotten.
The music, flowing like tears
On the skin of a lonely child alone
in a darkened room of a home
in a dream with walls distorted,
Doors and windows
Just not where they should be
And the only thing that is still in place
Is the mirror that sits before me,
My younger self,
The child,
The child that did not understand.
I am nine
And I am scared.
Ashes black as tar float and drift throughout the air,
And mask the scent of coming hopelessness,
The childhood jolt of premature confusion
Years of psychological stress and damage
All condensed into one tiny bathroom
Where the stone body sat
Nose pointing at the floor
A string of mucus dripping down
Thick as rope,
Frozen in time,
Like his body,
And although I know he is dead
Still I call his name.
Papa--I say,
Louder each time
And I am frustrated when he does not answer back
Like he is playing a game
The way he always did.
I am nineteen
And my aunt and I are not speaking.
The anger intense
But not so much as the bitter spite
I even feel when she falls ill.
And I thought, just maybe, she would get better
Like once she had before
I was wrong, again,
And here I am,
In the hospital room
Holding her tiny freckled hand in mine,
Listening to the beeps and hums
Of artificial breathing
There she is, I think,
How different she looks now
The warmth her eyes once knew is gone
Replaced only by a dark vacancy
And I place a hand to her brain
Which I can feel is already gone
But I try to save her, anyway,
In vain.
I am 22
And I feel the weight of my mistakes
Burden onto my back like the world,
That childhood has not forgiven me
Here I am again,
Here I am,
I cannot go back to the way I was
But that voice just makes it so easy
To trick me into believing
That after all this time
Still I am nothing.
Day after day, every passing moment,
I am who I used to be
But fight against it,
Struggle, sweat, and cry
Against that booming voice
That tells me to be afraid.
And year after year
As if by miracle alone the voice begins to quiet
And leave me with my own thoughts
Of who I want to be
Not who I used to be
And I stand before a mirror
That I had once stood before in a dream
Of a distorted self,
A suffering mind that never could hold onto childhood
That from that day of falling ashes
And flowing sadness
The self that is staring back at my reflection
Is smiling
For many years now smiling
Shadows of my dimming memories dancing in my eyes, like ice,
I press a hand to my old reflection
Here I am again, I think.
Here I am again.