Yellow Lemon

A tooth hurts and instantly I lose focus. Imagine crumbling infrastructures and the emptiness of my coffers. Wonder if poverty etches itself into your bones like scars you can never outrun. My grandmother saved every scrap of clothing, every dried end of bread until the day she died because they lost their crystal chandeliers to a market crash and their father to the bottle and it occurs to me that after that she never gained anything again, her life was always one of want. I was born thinking some security could never be taken from you but I believe nothing now, there's too little wall between me and the street, too few inches between me and the pain that lives in me. The tooth pulsates and reminds me of my beating heart, how I once thought all of this meant something and now I don't know. Wonder if purpose sits behind the confines of a 9-5 society, wonder if I could find it if I tried. The ledge is constantly so close now, it leers at me while I pretend not to see it, pretend my goals are set elsewhere. My grandmother tried to make her goals and the ledge the same and we never talked about it, never talked about how my grandfather had to pull her out of the car, out of her own way, we never talked about the infinite sadness that lived in her and scared us as children.

We never talked about how some scars come inherited in your bones, a gift you could not return. A debt you did not know how to repay.