How I Survived
How I Survived
I stayed up late nights shooting hoops at an invisible basket,
I perfected impossible moves and leaps toward the silent sky,
I let my knees burn holes in her mother's old worn carpet,
I mixed cheap noodles with sausage and prayers with nonchalance.
I developed foresight and bad omens like death's own shadow,
I packed chewing gum and a sharp sixth sense for danger,
I avoided gaggles of geese and murders of crows screaming warnings,
and I uttered no language for fear of being discovered.
I left when it was time to leave without looking back once,
I arrived too late to all the meetings set by fate,
I prayed before I walked and I prayed before I prayed,
I focused my gaze on the ground so I wouldn't see what's coming.
I never looked too long into anyone's eyes out of fear,
I honored my father and mother because I had a father and mother,
I ran errands and I ran home before the darkness fell,
I did my chores and I didn't shoot guns I only shot the breeze.
I learned to clown around and to mean mug with my face,
I listened for rain and I listened for gunshots coming,
I prayed to God they wouldn't discover who I really was,
I didn't hang up the phone and then I hung up the phone abruptly.
She had a beautiful figure so I let her be yours instead,
I locked the storm door when there were no storms in the sky,
and if someone knocked on the door I was never quick to answer,
I held my breath and counted seconds until they went away.
I moved away from the place where I was born and raised,
I moved back because longing ate me up from the inside,
I moved away again because home was no longer home,
I learned what to forget and what to remember in separate compartments.
I lived in contradictions like in two parallel worlds overlapping,
I did and didn't do things at the same time and place,
I was present and absent simultaneously like a ghost among the living,
I survived by never being completely myself ever fully.
I learned to read invisible signs in the air and in glances,
I learned when to be silent and when to speak and when to disappear,
I perfected the art of being nobody and somebody at the same time,
I became a master of survival through adaptation and vanishing.
And now I sit here and write this poem as testimony of existence,
as proof that I was here that I breathed that I survived,
that I went through all of this and I'm still whole or nearly,
that I learned to dance on a knife's edge without falling into the void.
I survived by being careful with every step and every thought,
by not letting anyone see who I really am beneath the mask,
by being ready for anything and nothing at the same time,
and by writing these verses so I won't forget I was once alive.
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