Walt Whitman (2013)

My grandfather used to tell me war stories when I slept walk at night

I'm pretty sure that's the reason I fell in love with Walt Whitman.

A man who spoke of the nightmares he suffered from every night,

but with such ease, as every syllable rolled off his tongue.

I used to see him stumble through the house late at night

to pour himself a drink, and sit alone at the table.

The day he fell, my mom held him in her arms

and I stood outside in the rain to motion the ambulance where to go

and that's the first and only time I ever heard him tell my mother he loved her.

I remember that moment like it was yesterday,

but it wasn't.

It was 9 years ago.

I sometimes wonder why it has been so easy 

to lose contact with so much family.

I mean, the saying goes 'blood is thicker than water',

but just because it's blood-doesn't mean you should put up with bullshit either.

I had a moment of realization when I had a dream of me having my first child,

and all the things I've been through with my family

I would never let my child go through that.

I would never let anyone do the things to them as my family had done to me,

wouldn't let words similar to the shit I've heard, be muttered around my child.

And as I scientifically agree that blood is thicker than water,

I would have to disagree with everything in me.

You're given family.

You meet friends.

You fall in love.

You make a child.

Nothing is guarenteed;

nothing can be unseen, nor undid. 

And I am not someone who can forgive,

especially when I can't forget the only time my grandfather told my mother

that he loved her, was when he felt obligated with what he thought would be his last breaths.

My own grandmother never even said it to her,

when she lost her husband of 76 years,

or when she was on her death bed.

Some people don't deserve the love you should give them,

just based on a title. 

Family is something that you are called, when you don't act like it.

If you can just stop talking to someone and never care what's going in their life-

family isn't what you are, you are no more than a stranger.

You're a footnote in a scrapbook that wont make it through a flood

or a fire

or a move.

You're a name sketched into a photograph in pencil,

and at some point in time, you'll disappear. 

You'll fade quicker than a faint rushed heartbeat

when someone you thought you knew walked in the door

but it was just someone who looked like someone you knew.

Someone who played a small part in your life,

and now they just resemble some homely looking man buying medicine for an unfortunate cold.

You'll be tire marks in a wet road when there's a 100 cars following behind you.

You're everything I had with me when I moved out, 

but I've slowly gotten rid of it all.