I am from Naperville, where
              summer skies boil and winters lie still in
              bleak, everlasting sleep.
I live within an arrangement of neatly stacked bricks,
where old laughter
              carpets the stairs-- left
is            a childhood long since lived--

              An old voice recorder contains
                                                                     forgotten dreams
              of a child whose wants                     were more evident
                                                                        than her needs.

              A small toy dog                                                     she
              once shyly
cherished
              now sits, abandoned,
              where one day it                                                   was
              dropped, and never picked up
again.

              A mother whose heart has been
                                                                                 burdened
              too greatly, a father who only
              sees his daughter on slow weekends,
              siblings drifted-- separated                                      by
              chemicals and                                                   honor.

I've forgotten about
              the years we spent searching
              for eggs, and everyone
              at Grandma's has grown,
              come Christmas--                                         Now here
                                                                                 I am left,
              the rights of a child but
              the pressures of
adulthood--
              my only younger relative--                          vulnerable,
              unsuspecting-- has yet to learn
              this complication.

              I come from a childhood of
              talent and future,
where the future is
              now the past and I am
unknown and
                                                                            unknowing--

              I believe in the right to believe
              or to not, whether it be in a god,
              in hope, in life
              or death and what comes after.
              I believe

I am       dying,
just
like
everyone
else.
                                                                                         But
              unlike others,                                                           I
                                                                                          will
              learn to                                                               live.