Poetry by Dythandra

My Nation, Apart

What time did you get in last night?
Was there somebody in the upstairs shower this morning?
Do you even know what the floor of that room looks like?

Questions. I assume they’re all rhetorical.
Strange, I haven’t grown an inch since I was 15
But the house is too tight a fit lately.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way
High school done, college underway
And yet,
Stuck here still, in the prison of my youth.

It’s not that I crave dorm life,
No doubt it would simply prove Sartre’s contention
That hell is other people.

No, a place of my own is the limit of my ambition,
But that too, rendered impossible,
As my part time prep cook wages
Barely pay for cigarettes,
And blond bitches never share their tips.

Rushing home on days I know my grades might arrive,
Thwarting the parentals’ inquisitive steps
To acquire another bludgeon in their ongoing plan
To pummel my spirit
Into acquiescence.

There is a better option, I try to explain
A little financial support
For their only offspring

And we’d all be free from this mundane purgatory.
But deep-down, they feel just the two of them might be even worse
Than reliving out the daily, disdain-driven dialogues
That suck the marrow from my soul.

As always, though, I have a plan
And I am never the lesser of two evils.