Thumb Drive
I keep my house key in my back pocket
I don’t need it anymore
Mom and dad got a padlock a year ago
I keep my cuticles on my tongue
I worry them until they bleed
It’s become a pattern
I keep my memory on a thumb-drive
I don’t know it like I used to
I forget what you did to me
But I still don’t crawl back
The rumbling of my engine worries me
But I don’t call
I broke a promise I made to myself
And that’s something you will never encourage from me again
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Mm. What an amazing expression of estrangement. As a person estranged from a family that dropped off one by one, I really appreciate you doing this work on the page. The every-moment shame of having no family or humans to talk to is so visceral and chemical, and it takes such enormous fortitude to keep choosing psychic health over dishonest relationships. The work never ends but the alternative to it is worse. Thank you for all the work you are doing on and off the page to be able to write this. I sure wish I could get mine on the page. This poem may help me do it.