Elucidating Questions

Custody

It has such terrible connotations

Like, he is in custody

He has been arrested

The police have decided he is not safe to others or himself

But

Children

Are also in custody

Doesn’t that

Doesn’t that ring sour?

Yet,

Children are in the custody of their parents

Or the state

Or one parent

Or the other

Custody

The simple way to bang it out is thus

Children are not educated in the world enough to not be a danger to themselves or others (most likely themselves)

Adults decide to become a danger to themselves or others (most likely others)

They must be in custody

One is a box with several hundred others

One is a box with five or six

Or three I guess

I find it so hard to look through the eyes of an only child

In custody

I wish someone else had taken custody of me when I was 13 and my parents shouldn’t have had children

My mother is a wonderful mother now that we’re all adults

In order to have hundreds of humans in custody each person responsible must undergo

Background checks

Education

Training

But to have one or two in custody

If every one in custody had at least one person assigned to them who was keeping them in custody

Maybe they’d turn out better

But those are adults and these are the next generation

Extensive training to raise adults

Children

And yet

At least all through humanity the one thing we have successfully taught most of the children

Ace-sexuals not withstanding

That the way to continue the species is sex

And we do it so

So like maybe my life doesn’t matter because I just

Not have custody

To spare my children from being raised by me

I don’t think I could understate

How much I love children

Much more than I do but I do love children

They are integral

And they are hurting

I know because I was one once

I wonder how everyone else forgets

Pain is a memory that never leaves

In the moment I know nothing I know pain and nothing else

I wouldn’t wish this on my child

So my child you are as unborn as you will always be

Tiny existences

So pure and sweet

You look upon them and think

I’m a bit jealous

So unaware of the world

So unaffected by her and those she carries

So alive in their unsure investigations of the world around them

Perpetual babies

Just trying to figure out how survival works

They need not know nor be thankful for the life they have.

They can merely have it.

Swing low in the night and watch the echo of my two halves

Dancing years ago

Moonless and dark

Tiny and bright

How many times do I have I say I know I know you’d still think of her

It’d all be one comparison

But even if I tried to hear it

Long ago I started shrugging them off

Stay

Or

You don’t deserve it

Thank god it didn’t surface this time last year I would I would have

Oh no

Such a mess in the messy hope of hopelessness

All I can think is I love you

And it’s cruel and unfair like the doomed angel’s thesis

And for these reasons the sky crashes in and the truth of the matter is

If I just keep going in this way

It’ll be over eventually

And I’ll have never met you

And I just wanted to meet you

I miss your face

Not in my days

I miss your laugh and your voice

Every second I that goes by without you

Painfully aware I’m missing you I’m missing you

I’m missing you

And everyone else is so simple

And you’re so complex and I want to thread my fingers through the knots and know their part in you

Waited wasted wanting

But my god he’s beautiful

My god you’re beautiful

They went down to Mexico

And came back separate

It’s peculiar

So outside of a situation

To look at it

As if I possess some right to judge their life when I’m just another

They’re just so

Just so human

Living their lives as balls of their past presented in the present

Merely pleasantly surprised to find myself in the position where I can listen

All the stories that have entered me and left

That awkward moment when it’s not the end of an era

That awkward moment when it’s the same thing

Astoria very much wanted to find the end of the line

Astoria very much wanted to end

Astoria didn’t think that the beautiful angel had been sitting there all this time staring at the past as if it were coming back to meet him

While watching through fingers pulled tightly shut as the future looms

But damn that it’s none of my business not my problem not something I am qualified to deal with damn it

Maybe they’ll end up together again

At least he’d be happy

Every second since the second

Has been the clock tolling with laughter at my expense

I don’t miss the optimism

I don’t miss the thinking something was about to happen

Change

Be good for once

I don’t miss the disappointment

I don’t miss

I miss you but it’s fleeting in moments

That I can’t grab hold of or the pain so I spend most days

Filling every moment of you with

Pointed disassociation

All of them

All of them

You should try it

Hermes says it’s great

The madness the madness the madness

Oh no you don’t

Funny that he’s happy this way.

Funny he’s complaining but he’s not actually wanting to be saved.

Funny that I tried.

It’s not fair that I stand here missing everything

I’m missing everything and

I suppose it’s just unfortunate

There’s nothing I can do and I’m no one

At least he’s happy being how it is so

At least he still has enough self to wish someone’s there

Or someone’s.not

Rather than simply endure their forever half existence in your life like a great idea you never said out loud that tries again slightly different every once in a while

Or all day every day

But it’s a game of catch

Or don’t catch on purpose

So I guess I dropped it

But I can’t stand this anymore

It hurts me to see you hurting but you’re hurting just fine over there and that’s totally fine with you as long as you can complain about it and I totally get that but I

There is nothing more maddening than watching or listening to someone hurting but being so incapable of helping