Tag: No Place Like Home

There is a banshee watching me from the roof,

Chewing on fat and looking for proof.

Six whole years have passed since I left the town,

I still look like a runaway bride in her gown.

And city sunsets take away the spinning demeanor.

The tongues of my ghosts only get meaner.

Moon projects my birthplace onto the ceiling.

There is no healing from this empty feeling.

There is a banshee wailing on my windowsill.

The room goes out of focus, but I stay still.

Six whole years spent running as fast as I can

Come crumbling down under fate’s wingspan.

-JW

After decades of outgrowing the good-for-nothing small-town tropes,

I close my lids some nights, asking the darkness – why do I still cope?

Not that I demanded it, no, not that I begged them to give me a rope.

But holding onto my road helps when I start losing the gilded hope.

It is funny, a thought can fly faster than a silver bullet through the sky.

I never requested a single favor, and nobody ever asked me “why”.

Now the mud is seeping through the cracks, it is muffling my cries,

And once again I find myself back in my hometown,

Feeling like a trapped butterfly.

-JW

The pigment in my irises left the day I cut off my roots.

It must have been the freedom poisoning the wind,

It made me put on the boots.

When I started walking, their cheers turned into boos.

It must have been the pride swallowing me whole

That turned me into a fool.

And I never beat the lonely current, never met a real man.

Whenever someone acted overly nice,

I refused a helping hand.

The cold shards of glass in my heart turned back into sand.

When a good god offered his only soul to me,

I burned down his plans.

My fragile moral high ground collapsed under the city.

All I knew was falling for another naïve cause,

And I did not look pretty.

They tried to tell me, tried to convince me with their pity,

But I was not a schoolgirl looking for a sign,

I bit back whoever bit me.

-JW

Oh father, my last dark omen, does the truth burn you as much as it burns me?

There is no exit, yet all you do is come up with new ways of abandoning me.

If ten years ago I could have chewed my own arm off to finally break free,

I would have left you cursing in the rearview mirror without missing a beat.

Now my sharp edges get rusty because I know a bit too much to scream out loud.

They ask how my father is doing, and I must act like I am goddamn proud.

My eyes leak salty rivers, yet somehow your frowning face never drowns.

I hope you smile when I burn your good deeds in front of a roaring crowd.

-JW

The air of my birthplace is my heaviest shackle.

Words tend to linger much longer

When it is your pride they tackle.

I remember how they rejected me as an heir,

Saying a bastard should know better

Than breathing their air.

Where are they now? Did I check all the boxes?

Do they hold me up high?

Or do they clutch their crosses?

And now I only know where I should never go,

The road less travelled

Is the road you pave alone.

The grass of my hometown is my own quicksand.

Sink or swim, honey,

Keep acting like this is your dreamland.

I recall how they lovingly said I will not make it.

Look at your paper crown now,

Look how I break it.

-JW

All I think about is the day you run out of things to combat –

And you’re left there with your pain,

Left without keys under the doormat.

I hope the way I play the field tears your insides into pieces.

You promised me I will never arrive,

Never see the place where all peace lives.

But my stamina found a way to bloom without you there.

Now you only have the photographs

And your own empty stares.

You ask about me in the shop I used to visit after school.

They know all about your history,

They even call you the small-town fool.

All I think about is the day you run into me in a parking lot.

I don’t resemble your daughter,

You’ve become just an afterthought.

I hope the way I walk by, cold and unfazed, rips you apart.

Despite your worst wishes, I pulled through.

To spite you, I stayed honest at heart.

-JW

The webs you made were not a good enough reason for you to leave.

My life stood there, naked and exposed, as I struggled to breathe.

Your sharp teeth found ways to bite, but you were, oh, so surprised

When your own child grew up to be a shark too,

Refusing to swim circles in your lies.

It is true, strangers are alerted about my talent to kill my darlings.

I hear you spoke to the local cashiers; I hear you gave them a warning.

You think you have so much gasoline in your tank, always running,

But you gifted your mistress a perpetual-motion daughter

With twice as much cunning.

Now we pass each other in the city streets, ignoring all the deceit.

Fate is a cruel beast, she loves to frame and glisten the worst receipts.

Your family knows how hard you can go when it comes to neglect.

I wish this the guilt feeds on your soul until the end,

I hope it gets so heavy it breaks your neck.

-JW

I am sitting still, staring at an empty letter.

Forgiveness does not come easy to me.

Maybe you are also sharpening the feather,

But maybe you are just as sad and lonely.

Never had trouble forgiving my city friends.

The shame flies low when you compromise.

I want to meet you and see both ends,

You want to spread rumors and villainize.

So, I get stuck on blaring neon streets,

They keep making my cries radio silent.

I dream of trees, but you reach for the reefs.

My pen runs dry, and yet again

I retire the hope of finding an asylum.

-JW

Nobody’s story ever resembles mine.

I don’t have the scars proving I fell from the highs,

And every soul I meet doesn’t have much to hide.

I tend to wonder –

What do they do with their nights?

Because I travel back to the roads I discovered,

I think about the lives I wanted to color

Just to end up in city crowds, always seeking cover.

The darkness calls again,

It wants to make me its lover.

-JW