Wet Dog Smell

Pain isn’t parallel 

Pain is uninvited, stored in the attic and locked in a black leather chest.

Pain can’t even comprehend pain

Pain lingers and overstays

Pain is not a friend nor is it an enemy

Pain is merely pain.

It’s cold and it burns going down

Pain is sinking into the couch with my eyes closed and tears creeping down my flushed violet cheeks

It’s wet dog smell and grit under my fingernails as i messily strike the chords to Indiana.

Pain is turning the heat up to feel my skin burn, to feel anything.

The truth is I can bare pain

I can get angry, I can turn the radio up to thirty eight

I can hear pain knocking and choose to open the door. 

I can hate who I am and decide not to be that anymore.

The thing about pain is it stays until it’s too drunk to get up

And too tired to care

The thing about pain 

Is that I’m finally fucking writing again 

I feel closer to my mother than I have ever before

I look in the mirror, I see her in me and I don’t feel like being mean anymore.

I want to know my dad not because I need anything but because he’s still a kid too.

He likes to dance and sing and feel the wind on his rubber skin.

Suddenly I miss the sound of my brother whistling as he paces in his boxers,

I’ve always felt like the older sibling, though he’s got me beat by two years.

I’m aching for us all to be together again, but I know that’s unrealistic

I can’t turn back time, even if I could I wouldn’t want to.

The thing about pain is that it breeds change 

It creates new plans

The thing about pain is there’s nowhere to hide

It comes looking for you, no matter how hard you try

It beats you to a pulp, it finds you when you’re finally hitting your stride.

The thing about pain is that you need it to understand your surroundings

The people you love

The words that the music lies inside.

You need pain to learn how to surrender, to want to survive.