I Tried To Do A Revision But This Spilled Out Instead

by Abigail Parlier

I feel something inside me break

Because home is home

And you’re supposed to love home, right?

Isn’t that the point?

It’s not that I don’t love home

Because I love it, I really do

It’s just that I can’t help but think that I don’t belong.

The familiarity is stifling

And there are handprints all over me

Like invisible bruises that hurt when pressed because

I’m one person here and

One person there and

All those me’s are trying to climb out of my skin and

I can’t contain them so they leave marks

Where they’ve tried to escape.

I get in a rut that I dug myself,

A rut that I made from driving the same roads

Over and over again

Until I can’t make a turn that doesn’t coincide with what has already happened.

Words tumble out of me

Because I can’t keep them in any longer and

I’m writing them as fast as I can think them

Because I’ve never done this before

Because I’ve repressed it for so long

That the realization is

Climbing its way out of the rut and

Climbing its way out of me.

I’m sorry if I don’t make sense but

I picture these roads in my head and

I picture

Myself

Out.

The Charles Carter