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Ryan McLellan
Too Much Life
She sprang back, a Lady Lazarus;
fresh linens, dehydration, lungs of lead,
eyes bags of blood, like a mulish
dandelion on a treated lawn;
not because of her mother's tear-filled
beseeching
(Please, just breathe, honey …
please, just breathe)
but because there were
too many shards of energy left in her head,
too many supernovas in her eyes —
She couldn't stay put, even with the
restraints fastened, and she leapt from
the new womb like Blake's infant, unable
to allow father to break her, unable to pay
obedience to "Therriens don't cry" as they
searched for a vein, time and time and time
and time again, and all the while
he sat at home, calling for updates on his dying
daughter while she had arteries and her
spinal column tapped —
When breathing became a chore, she contemplated
what it might be like if she, just … stopped … secretly
cursing her mother for not staying strong
as she wept at the bedside —
A slow decent into death without breath
seems intriguing and a welcome relief from no sleep,
no food but ice chips and endless I.V's —
She was … just … so … fucking … tired …
of trying to be the perfect daughter for a man
that could never be pacified, tired of smiling
through screams to people who thought they
knew her, tired of binging and purging, binging
and purging, tired of not feeling like a kid, of
running away, of filling voids with various boys
who'd treat her like shit, she just wanted rest
and she wanted youth back from men who'd
taken it from her with their words and their
bullshit promises …
She breathed,
too much "Fuck you" left in those lungs,
her breath and her song
was an incendiary symphony —
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