the suicidal king of hearts

the truth is i haven’t gone to church
in years and the town i was born in is one
half train tracks, one half hotels and one half
fast food restaurants.
i guess i was always going to be good at running away.
it’s in my blood.

i’m getting too old to still want to turn
into a mermaid on my sixteenth birthday
so i do not have to worry about taxes
and income and the difference between mols
and moles and the difference between
wearing your heart on your sleeve
and giving it to someone you trust.

it would be nice to not have to worry.

but if this poem is about honesty,
i have to tell you i still dream about that
sometimes.

the thing i’ve noticed about growing up,
is that you’ll think you’re old and you’ll think you’re old
but you’re never really grown up until
you walk past dandelions without picking them
or step on one two three cracks in the sidewalk,
without remembering there is something you should be
regretting.

some days, i’ll wake up and i
won’t want to be a mermaid anymore,
i’ll just want to be gone.

to tell you the honest to god truth,
i used to think when i was older,
i would know who i was and i would no longer
want to have a better name or a
better weight or a better GPA.

but the closest thing i’ve ever come
to understanding this maze of bone
and marrow i’m stuck in was the first time i drove
in my car, down the highway that ran
through the center of downtown, past
the hotels and the train tracks and the
fluorescent ’24 hour’ signs—

i’m the wheels of a car and also the rear view mirror
and it’s why i hate myself so much. you know,
because a part of me is always running away
and the other part is always looking back.

the thing about growing up is
that you’ll get older and older and
eventually you’ll realize
that you’re getting tired of chasing rainbows
and wishing your legs were longer.
you’re getting tired of kicking over dandelions and
wishing.
growing up isn’t a number and it isn’t really an action.
it happens when you get too tired and it happens
when you give in.

i am not going to be a mermaid and i will eventually have
to deal with broken hearts and debt and english
research papers and smoking and
bad decisions i should be too old to make.
hiding from them and pretending to swim away
doesn’t change that.

i am old enough to know better.
it’s january 27th again
and i still don’t.