"In school they teach you
how to multiply 9x8
make you read Macbeth
and have you memorize the first
10 amendments to the constitution.
But they don’t teach you how to
stop loving someone who has
stopped loving you
or how to deal with losing
a friend to an unsaid goodbye
and a relative to a cancer that ate
away their brain.
At home I learned
from my father that
alcohol can make as many problems
as it solves
but damn does it feel good
to let my throat burn instead of my heart
and to tune out the problems
in my head
that I just couldn’t solve.
Because life isn’t 9x8
and it isn’t the way authors describe
their characters in a story.
It’s those nights you lay awake
missing someone
wishing things could be different
and it’s the next day when you realize they can’t
and then it’s how you pick yourself up
after being down for so long.
I taught myself that.
"
