ROADKILL

You deserve to be alone. Okay.

You’re miserable. I believe you now,

should’ve listened the first time you spit it.

Your spine is a road under constant construction.

Your heart lies half-dead on the side of it,

bleeding, barely breathing, and begging for the Lord.

So it took me a few years to hear.

You deserve to waste away like gray.

Okay. You’re miserable, I believe you.

You don’t need my conviction to feel guilty.

I accept your triumph of comfort and fear.

Stop yelling in a way that only fathers can hear.

I hear you, loud and clear.

You’ve earned your tire and attenuate, I know.

To sleep in sheets like a ghost without a home

on a mattress that needs braces to match your crooked bones.

House of haunted heart,

may the bottle that drowns out my voice

one day be the coffin you crawl in

to the ground’s mouth. Let death

spread beyond the chasm of your obliqueness,

where the fantasy you exude ceases,

the day a non-prophet organization teaches

your prospect lover not to buy into false advertisement.

Forget sweet nothings.

You whispered, “Nothing’s sweet,”

long enough in my ear.

I hear you, loud and clear.