AlOnEAndBlEEdIng

Daddy always tells me that girls who like girls are bad, and boys who like boys, they're worse. He says so because he as a penis. He says so because he thinks his manhood is in danger. He says so because Brokeback Mountain got movie of the year. He says so, because God says so. And I remember believing him, when I was little. I remember hating girls that like girls because I knew I was one of them. Those girls who like girls, they're not good people. Daddy told me so. I remember when she and I, when we, stretched ourselves out across the trampoline on the 4th. We had a big blanket around us so daddy couldn't see. I remember thinking 'this i

Ring… Ring… What color underwear are you wearing? I knew who it was, and knew he didn't really care. It was one of our jokes, and we were laughing already. The boss man took me out for booze, he said. I wowed them with the presentation. I'm getting a promotion…. Hey, schools tomorrow. You need to go to bed. Because you and me, we're the only ones in that family who are ever going to make something of ourselves. I'm proud of you. He never said what for, but he sure was proud. Ya know…Choke. I've always thought of you as like…, my own kid. I choked too. You're going to be great, he said. I know it.  After we said our goodbyes, I went t

Jon's hope. That's what he is. You wouldn't see it in his gap toothed smile, or his eyes. No. You see it in his skin. You can't count his struggles with bruises and scars, he's better than that. But they're there. There's an eagle on his chest he isn't too proud to wear now a days. The ink is fading, he doesn't have need or desire to get it filled. I can't blame him. That eagle took his wife away. She's on his chest, too. Right where his heart use to be. I guess some Marines get awfully lonely, lonely enough to rape a pregnant woman then try to fix their mistake with a pair of panty hose and a woman's neck. I'm glad my brother was a Navy Seal

Jack the Sunday school teacher Bridwell is missing his right thumb. He makes this apparent with empty thumbs-ups and high fours. He says a fish bit it off, but when I had to pull he and my brother apart in the middle of class, I began to doubt that story. Jack the Sunday school teacher Bridwell says you don't have to put poison in your body to know it kills. He thinks other religions are all poison. He thinks the Muslims are going to hell, and Jack the Sunday school teacher Bridwell is just righteous enough to throw the first stone. Jack the Sunday school teacher Bridwell is from the Bible belt. He thinks I'm 'Satanic' and my brother is 'kill

My house is shaky.  Not the kind of shaky that happens to your eyes when they first adjust to the neon green paint. More like the shaky we all got when the city threatened to fine us because out grass was over a foot high and two of our cars didn't run. I guess the city thinks a car isn't a car without a transmission or breaks. I guess cars are sculptures then, and the city doesn't like Ford's art. My house is the kind of thing someone gets when they get inside and see the doughy woman attached to the oxygen machine tangled up in her own hose. It's the kind of disappointed smile that little old ladies get when they finally realize I'm the Pas

Brittany, Brittany, Brittany. At school the name means redundancy, repetition. Brittany, Brittany, Brittany. Seven girls turn around. Brittany, Brittany, Brittany. Fourteen girls now. They're all the same. The name is, normality, or rather, lust for normality. Glazed over eyes and glazed over ambitions. Redundancy. Dull and watered down. Repetition.  A Brittany has never made a difference. I am not Brittany, Brittany is my name. I am real! I am here. I can scream my opinions and my VOICE will be just as STRONG as my THOUGHTS. I will not be silent and hide behind a mask of "normality"… I will NOT be dressed in such a uniformed manner with

I have a little black book hiding somewhere within the depths of my room, buried beneath dirty laundry and forgotten papers, but inside those pages I've recorded things I wish I'd never seen, or heard, yet hope to never forget. Whenever I pass my parent's room, I don't hear soft snoring or, perhaps a polite whisper. I hear sobs, mostly from my mother, of how she's not good enough for us, how she wishes that she had killed herself that day instead of having had the needle been fought away. Yet on other days, those few days I can hear my father's voice raised in what seems like a prayer, sobbing for his wife's life and for what's left of our br

"It doesn't always have to, but when we let ourselves allow good things to happen, and we let the good things come into our lives, then the bad ones soon overtake them. Nothing perfect can last forever. That's why babies cry, because for a few months, if only a blink in time's eye they were protected and fed, they were given everything they could desire, until they were born. Until they witnessed their first act of hatred, took in the first breath of stale air. It's then when they discover what they've been truly born into…" She replied, her graying hair tucked behind a pale ear and rocking the child in her arms. It wasn't exactly a pleasant