Breaking the Skin: Shelbi Owen
I don’t write poetry. Or at least what I write doesn’t feel like poetry to me. I usually stick to fiction and nonfiction. If I had to give what I’ve written here a label, it would probably be something like dramatic nonfiction in short sentences with a weird structure. I write about the disconnect I’ve felt from the people in my family to the grief of losing someone I didn’t know enough about. This weird inbetween of poetry and nonfiction lets me put words to the feelings I’ve kept bottled up since I learned what that phrase meant. This weird mess I’ve created is my way of working through a childhood that I’ve tried really hard to forget.
one
Maybe I love you.
Maybe I see you and think I wouldn’t want to be anybody else in the world when I grow up.
I look at you and see through rose-tinted glasses.
What’s that in your hand?
Why is there someone coming over?
Why can’t I tell Dad?
Why can’t I tell anyone?
Why are you telling me that what I am watching you do I am not really watching you do?
Why are you doing it?
Why did you bring me with you if I wasn’t supposed to see this?
Why don’t you call me anymore?
Why don’t we share clothes or food or time anymore?
Why don’t you ask me about my grades or how I’m doing in school anymore?
Why don’t you love me?
Why didn’t you tell me about grandma?
Why did I have to be your shoulder to cry on when she died? I needed a shoulder too.
Why am I always the person you come to when all your other people are gone?
Why am I comforting you on a friend's death when it's supposed to be the other way around? You weren’t there for me when mine died.
Why do you have to bring my father into everything? This isn’t about him, this is about us.
Why do you have to make every situation about you?
Maybe I shouldn’t pry.
Maybe you’re supposed to be the center of my life and you’re so far from it I can barely see you.
Maybe one day I’ll finally understand you.
Maybe I love you.
And maybe things would have been different if I still loved you.
By Shelbi Owen
two
I watched as this god-fearing woman started breaking down at the sheer thought of someone going through this world without having God to guide them. Tears welled in her eyes as she told me that her and my dad used to pray and pray and pray outloud, together, at the altar.
I could only stare at her.
She talked about how scary it must be not to have God to turn to when things become too much. She talked about it being lonely and empty.
It almost made me feel something for the religion again. Seeing that pure faith she had.
If I still believed, it would have moved me.
I didn’t tell her I don’t believe anymore. That I don’t believe that there is anything out there looking over us. I didn’t tell her I haven’t felt the hands of God since I used to pray to him hoping that he would fix my life and he never did. Or at least not in the way that I wanted him to. I didn’t tell her that I used to cry in bed and curse his name over and over and over for cursing me with this existence. I didn’t tell her that if God was real, he wouldn’t love me because I’m not the perfect docile Eve he created as a model for the rest of us. I didn’t tell her that he would condemn me to Hell just for loving someone of the same gender. I didn’t tell her anything.
I stared at her and wondered if she could see the lack of faith on my face.
I stared at her and hoped and begged that she couldn’t see through my soul. The soul bound to Hell.
I stared and stared and watched tears form in the corners of her eyes and I stared.
All I could do was stare and hope that the tears in her eyes were blurring her vision too much to be able to see the real me.
I watched as this woman I’ve known for years felt sorrow and pain for someone else because of the meer thought that they didn’t have God in their life. That they didn’t have that person to pray to and to seek guidance from. I watched as the emotions of the past caught up to her and poured into her like God himself was flowing through her preaching his gospel. I watched. I hoped. I stayed silent.
I stayed silent like I have through every conversation where God is present. Through lectures, churches, baptisms, bible schools, bible studies, circles and preachers. I stayed silent and I stared. It was the only thing I knew to do.
By Shelbi Owen
Three
There's a red bird outside the window.
Come look.
Did you know they’re messengers from loved ones that have passed?
They’re watching over us from heaven.
There’s a red bird outside my window.
I watch it moving on the fence.
It reminds me of you.
Who did you think about when you saw red birds outside your window?
Are you watching me from heaven?
Do you hate who I’ve become?
By Shelbi Owen