i can't stop thinking about how the sugar and salt granules always coated the kitchen table, like a thick film, it would be dust if it was another house. but it's sugar and it's salt and it's sticky and it's suffocating and it's home and it's horrible that it's home and i don't want it to be home but that's what it is.

somehow that's the way that life is. and sometimes that's often the way life is, like how i got my first piece of clothing that was all my own when i was seven, how i hugged the purple lily pattern and pulled it over my head feeling like i finally had something all my own that wasn't stained with the memories of my sisters. something that i could get dirty with mud that i played in, something that i could dribble grape juice down my skin and stain the shirt because it's all my own and it's my mess to make and something that i own all just for me.

i have hand me down dreams as well, little wants that fell down from their shoulders to mine, weighing me down and slowing me down and making my heart bleed. because i have my own dreams too, but i have to be everything they couldn't be, i have to be better because if im not then im not. and being better means im something other than a catch all for everyone's hopes, like im a waste basket for things they've thrown away.

i used to have to sit at the counter while everyone else sat at the table, sugar and salt imprinting in their arms. i didn't fit, even though i was the smallest, i could've nestled in just fine, it could've been me at that table too. lonely, lonely, running up rapid, and growing up violent. sipping on honeysuckle, gnawing on sun rays, eating dinner at the counter, dangling feet off of stools, ruining my not hand me downs with gravy and soy sauce. no salt on my fingers, no sugar in my hair.

i still grow with hand me down thoughts, things i want to discard, tear from my body like a dress, things i wish would fall out like baby teeth do, painful for a minute then not.  i used to look at the mirror and see my sisters staring back, their eyes the same intrepid blue, their smile toothy and sinister, their mouth poised to lie. i used to know that i was a patchwork of their worst parts, whatever they wanted to get rid of they handed down, their insecurities, their dull, their wild. i don't think i know who i am, maybe i am them and they are me, but i've always thought that to be a bad thing. i don't know why, but i do.

when i die, whether it be soon or not, bury me in all my faults and tie it together with a blue ribbon. lay me down in the ground and as i go tell me who i really was, whisper to me what hand me down mess of mine that you inherited, and return it to me, unless you want to keep it, unless you think it's part of you. keep it then, and pass it down, till the hand me downs can't be handed down and find their own grave too.