What's the point of straining the smiles
if there's only so much tension before they finally crack?
Why do we keep pretending
in the effort of getting a real "happy family" back?

Your efforts to mend what's broken
with unkempt promises and the impossible power of time
only ruin our own chances
at dreaming of ever-afters
mutilated by the memories of our own minds.

All your happy faces
plastered on with toxic glue
and stabbing attempts at closeness and comfort
just leave all of us more black
and blue.

But to let go completely
would be biting a ricocheting bullet
and I guess maybe
MAYBE
we really do love each other
since none of us can shoot it.

But this protection from inevitable pain we're all supplying
won't keep any of us from locking ourselves away
and hiding
to discover the flooding relief
that comes from relentlessly crying
and crying.

The self-sacrificial act for all
is just cutting ourselves
in the hopes of keeping the rest of us from bleeding.
All the torture we continually endure for one another
is nearly as agonizing
as finally allowing this grave march its proceeding.

We're not a happy family
after all the make-up sinks down into the porcelain baptism
and this repetition of foolish desperation
is merely an anti-depressant-induced sort of optimism.

Covering up the problem will never solve its sickening riddle
and it begins curing nothing
as every time you watch me
you keep wishing
that somehow, I could still be
little.

I don't want our crippled forgivenesses
or the walls we build
as forbidding fortresses.
I want the freedom of a family who knows how to fight.
I will teach my children
that sometimes by exposing what is wrong
you can actually make things right.

But if marriage is a cage
and a burden of endless battles
please, dear God,
let me never make it to the chapel.
Because this is not the life I'll live
when I've flown from home
to search out the world's adventures.
If I fall in love, I'll fall hard
so that the bruises might last as long as it takes
for me to finally
need some dentures.

When I love
let me do it
like crazy
so that there's never any need for bullets
not even maybe.
Not
even
maybe.