Lemony.

I am going home at 1:30 tomorrow. My Mum, my Dad, my brother and my boyfriend will be there. When I write poetry, I think about what they would say if they read it. Sometimes I think I write detached, abstract, impossible poems because my writing is where all of my identities overlap. I don’t want my parents to see me as a sexual being. I don’t want my brother to see me as normal. I don’t want my boyfriend to see me as an adult.

I watched “Thumbsucker” yesterday and remembered that I used to suck my thumb. I stopped in fourth grade in an attempt to not have to get braces. I had braces for three and a half years. I still wear my retainer to bed. My brother’s retainer is twice the size of mine. He used to rinse it out everyday but never clean the case. So his clean retainer would sit in a gunk-lined container by the sink. Sometimes I broke down and cleaned if for him so I wouldn’t gag while I was brushing my teeth.

I wish I could major in art and have enough patience to make a living out of it. Or writing. I wish I could have the patience to write everyday and edit pieces I think are done. I tried to revise some of my old poems but I couldn’t touch them. It feels like I’m butchering someone else’s work because I am not in the same mindset that I was when I wrote the poem and if I change it, the mindset I had when I wrote the poem will be wrecked. I’ll have to work on that…