It sits at the foot of the leather chair in your living room.
A car, carved from a single piece of wood
when your father was just a boy.
Nothing recognizable, simply a design
in the mind of a child too sensitive for his time and place.

There is a ribbon taped to the bottom with old cellophane tape.
Third place. A national award from General Motors,
a contest created to awaken young designers,
and set them on a path of creativity and industrial design.
It took. You have the drawings your father made,
all swooping fenders and steel lines.

They beat much of his heart out of him in that time and place.
They made him tough and hard, his brokenness disguised
as strength and rough corners. He tended his wounds
with alcohol and anger.

But his desire to create never left him. Sober, he was brilliant,
an innate understanding of things and possibilities
punctuated his life and through him, mine.
He died just a few short years ago.

We have choices of what to remember. What to keep.
I choose things like this car that sits unobtrusively
at the foot of the leather chair. I choose made things
and they surround me like an aura, even
when they go unnoticed by those who merely come and go.

to do the right thing for
the wrong reason or

to do the wrong thing for
the right one

I feel as though I am a caged bird,
Unable to speak nary a thought or a word.
I cannot fly away from my troubles,
As time moves on, my burden only doubles.
I was so happy before, but now sadness reigns,
Surprising how confusion and doubt can cause such pains.
I can choose to be free, and forever be sad,
Or remain in this cage, yet my heart will be glad.

I can't be the only one

Who doesn't have a clue

About where I am heading

Nor what I meant to do.

But time will not wait for me

And as the days go passing by,

One thing I know that I control;

It's up to me to try.

I sit perched on hot summer high wires
swaying in warm dusty winds
watching those who cannot fly
and I pity them

I have a choice to sit or slip into the blue
I have two choices
and you only have you

I wasn't raised to learn by myself
I was raised to lean on others for help.
I was told I could never go around or beyond
the corner of the block or leave the lawn.
I'm terrified of going anywhere, of standing on my own feet.
The way I was raised is evident in my skills.
I stayed indoors most of my life,
I watched the other kids from behind the windowsill
I never learned how to do the simplest of things
After my first fall on a bike, with a small little scrape upon my knee.
I was taught that if I can't do it once, there's no point in even trying.
Any opportunity I had to learn a basic skill,
was put to waste, as I was shoved aside after my first few tries and told,
"If you can't do it, I will."
Now I get in trouble, for the things I never knew.
As after every single attempt,
"Forget it, I'll do it," is what I hear.
When I'm told to do something that would be considered basic,
I require a detailed set of instructions so that I may achieve it.
With all these chances that I was completely ridden,
company was another thing that I was never given.
During all the summers, where I was all home alone,
despite it being mid-July, it was always freezing cold.
An only child is how I was born and raised.
I had full conversations with myself in fear of becoming bored.
I strive to be listened to, I strive to be heard,
I try and I try, yet I still cannot utter a word.
Told to stay silent, told to stay still, with no personal experiences
I have no personal will.