Cool Beth is giving me flavor
she’s putting Mickey Mouse into my heart
giving me her rich sermon ‘Iz gonna be all right’
but I’ve caught 21st century syndrome where I have glass eyes
for mountains of misery

I see kids,

just like Beth’s age
she’s made her home in the body of an adult
while I’m uncomfortable in mine, my
skeleton tattling my imperfections

Romantic teens,

touching each other like turtle doves
I grimace at my fingernails bit and bled
like a bridge blown up

New bouncing-baby mothers,

with tiaras in their smiles
while looking at her baby for
permission to interact

And widows,

wondering will I turn out to be like them
some it takes their whole soul to lift a handbag
do they see half the woman they were in my eyes?

I look over at Beth
I scan her like an oral SATS test that
I can’t prepare for-
what’s going to happen next, can I trust
her I don’t kno-ohs?

But people keep looking at her
disability
not her capabilities!

She deserves her rights too!
What do you mean
she doesn’t belong
on the streets?!
AS if you have any judgment over her life!

What do my friends
mean by pressing Beth to confess her sins of being
handicapped
and asked
Is she normal?

For Christ’s sake,
she has a loving boyfriend,
he scratches her back and she scratches his!
she socializes with Happy Timmy on the bus!
Beth knows how to
use money
to buy groceries and look both ways before
crossing the street

Isn’t that
the
bare
minimum
requirement
for
being an
acceptable
human
being
in
society?

So what the hell do you mean
by normal?

Maybe you need to pick up on your Kindergarten skills!

All the years and tears I’ve felt lonely
being an older sister
like I had to carry the burden of Christ
upon looking at myself in the mirror
when all along the
freak
show
was just me behind my own stubborn bars
to not bare arms sooner
when Beth left my life

I wanted mother back so much into my soul
before she gave herself away to all the fucking Vegas Ringo-Rambo
men that
wear guns in their noses
and corona colored lips, they
don’t even shake our hands goodbye
and they're gone by the drop of a hat...

But life is looking up the way

Cool Beth is giving me flavor
she’s putting Mickey Mouse into my heart
giving me her rich sermon ‘Iz gonna be all right’

And I start believing

Because maybe when she
pointed to the moon
and I played the stuck up sister with spite
‘The moon isn’t following us, Beth’
that I finally was beginning to

see

the way the sunrise
dawns on you

Beth meant that family
is everywhere with open arms
like a permanent invitation to heaven
no matter how you color them