C. J. Robinson

Hiding was something I remained good at For years afterwards, I would hide From the things that I feared And from the things that feared me

My spirit was on lockdown, and I Kept the parts of myself hidden That I was terrified the world would see

But truth is a flower that takes root quite well In the darkest of places, and with the Virtue of patience it waits for The gleam of someone's eye To make it bloom

You cannot smother my truth without my consent

And you Quite plainly No longer Have my

Consent

I was a boy when I first climbed the Oak, Whose branches were so vast They seemed to stretch out for hundreds Of feet in all directions Whose limbs reached and searched, Groping for the touch of the other trees

Even though the other trees shrank away from it's majestic size

There was a barrier that I wanted to tear down So that I might see why the other trees Would want to withhold their leaves from the Oak

And as I struggled to climb, Scraping my shins and tearing away the skin From the tips of my fingers I also found that I could dissolve my self-doubt

I reached the top at sunset And I discovered not God Or inner peace Or some serendipitous refection of self

I found a nest of five birds which, Without sound or ceremony Simply spread their wings and flew into the sun

Whereas I, I would have to climb down and begin again

There was a barrier that I wanted to tear down But how should I know if it was mine?

If I listened closely enough I could hear him coming, I could feel his drunken anger in those moments when He was swaying between seething and swinging

But it was the moments when the world was completely silent That I learned to fear the most

Except these people haven't any dominion over you that You don't hand to them yourself, In your misguided attempts at self-parenting

A seed cannot water itself, And requires the gentle warming touch of the sun And yet we try to raise ourselves in the shadows Of our own reprisals

We are children with no mothers Rushing through a well-lit world with our eyes closed

"Open Open Open your eyes!"

And the voice of our collective heart remains pleading

Just stop running for a moment, Hold your hands out to the void And dare yourself to feel

I was always so afraid to Walk around that corner

Many mornings I would stand in The living room, trembling near the Couch as the heat from The sun slashed through the bay window And crept slowly up my back

It seems I never felt anything Except for the heat on my back, Regardless of where I went

But if I stood too long, I knew you Would find me, and if I snuck back To my room, I knew you would find me

If I hid, you would find me If I told, you would find me

And so I would walk into the kitchen No matter how much I wanted to run away

"Here comes The Idiot."

Yes, always the idiot, I've heard my name before, and I'm Familiar with myself by now, Familiar in ways I try desperately to forget As I pull Ritalin from the kitchen drawer And fight against my nerves To keep each pill from falling to the floor

And every weekday morning at 7 A.M. As I knelt on the linoleum and cried inside I would tell myself

One day

One day I'm going to be stronger than him

But what would I do, then?

What were those lights in the sky that night, As we returned from the place We were never supposed to be?

Dots of red. Dots of blue. Dots of ever-changing hue.

I wasn't supposed to know, was I? That we were being followed, That deep in the woods a creature had Made its home amongst the bramble And disintegrating wood patch, Pacing impatiently.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Like a pendulum axe swinging down, Invoking fear and confusion

But you wouldn't be tied down Like the rest of them, To have your life ruled by the clock, Tick tick ticking as the pendulum came down Upon your naked throat

Hell was other people Hell was complacency and conformity And you would damn them all Before you ever fell into that trap

No sir No rat trap for you

What were those lights in the sky that night? And how long were they looking for us Before they found us?

I looked forward to every other Friday Like it was a holiday made just for me But it seemed like everyone was Just a little to busy to celebrate it

"It's alright," Mama would say. "You can go visit next time." But the promises she made were just As hurtful as the ones he broke

And even though I knew better I would choose to swallow the lies Because lies give you hope Lies give you a reason to believe

Then your weekend came along (They always called it your Weekend, as if you'd paid for it And therefore owned it)

I wanted you to accept me so badly That I convinced myself you had Simply missed my call, You just missed all my calls

That had to be the reason And then finally you picked up, My heart jumped, and I asked "Can we come over for your weekend?"

I don't remember getting out all the words, But you were ready with an answer I was crushed, but what could I do? It was your weekend, after all

As the years went by and My childhood became shorter I discovered that I needed to cry Less and less

But it wasn't because you became nicer It was because I became stronger

Everybody knows if you don't love Then you don't get hurt And so I taught myself emptiness

And the more emptiness I learned, The more I realized everyone around me Was empty, too Like we had all learned the same trick Without ever having a teacher

It was ingrained in our genetic makeup

Sustenance, fire, shelter and isolation These were the things that ancient man Needed in order to survive

Sustenance to feed and nurture our bodies Fire to make our sustenance edible and safe Shelter to protect our fire from the elements And isolation to protect us from each other

And so we gave birth to fear and judgement By creating differences among ourselves A lesson we passed down Without ever really trying to teach it

Those who dared to show love And to show that it was okay to love All were eventually brought down

"See? Love is pain. Love is destruction. So come down from that mountain. It is much safer here with us!"

Because emptiness meant survival, and To love was to perish painfully

This was what I learned When you told me I couldn't stay

That was what I realized When you showed me I wasn't good enough