he's spiraling downward and no one knows what to do and he stumbles around and he doesn't care. after he wakes up he lays next to the phone and says he's thinking and he argues with amy and he talks to mom and maybe he goes to school, maybe he goes to see eddie with me, but if nothing else happens he goes out and does it all over again. tripping over nothingisms and his lips forming words before his mind has a chance to catch up and he says nobody cares. because it feels like that when you're seventeen going on eighteen, just like i was, and the realisation hits that the parents are fallible and have their own lives to attend to as well and maybe you've only got yourself sometimes and it's big and the world and sometimes positive stress is negative stress.

and i know i know now if i could show this to him he'd make it straight through to the end and it'd be okay. but i don't know if this is the kind of thing i can just transfer to him especially when a lot of what i says gets lost in the translation of the two languages we seem to speak. we're a lot like each other but not enough on the outside surface for me to remind him of that fact.

and all i can do is watch.

my dad knocks on his door, "are you alive in there?" it's 4:30 and he's just getting up and that's fine. but. from the bed to the couch to the door. cause nobody cares.

and i can't help my dad either. he tells me he wants to send him to boot camp that he wants to hit him that since i'm moving out by may he's going to sell the house when my brother turns eighteen and we can all go our seperate ways. and i sit there with my arms crossed and my funny look and i explain to him why he can't do these things because i know he doesn't want to. because he has our names tattooed on his back only i don't think he's seem them in awhile and i haven't told him to look.

cause he's got his own problems with his job and his body and his money and i swear he hasn't taken medication in four years but he's got his own brand. so yeah, he's got problems, too.

only i'm happy all the time and i buy groceries and gas and cars and i drive home expecting one to be sitting on the couch telling me the other is dead

there's always that fear, that responsibility to do my best to make things work

but it won't stop me, only help me.