North & West

Five

I was on edge.

After approaching the steps, I paused and stared at the bodyguard positioned at the door. It struck me as odd that there would be a bodyguard in a public place – a place where everyone was welcome.

But after the bulky man looked me over and wrote me off as nonthreatening, I stepped into the room and I knew why they needed a bodyguard.

It wasn't a big building, probably about as wide as the living room within my house, but scattered around the tables and the chairs within the space were people. I realized, with a bit of piqued interest, that each one was different. These people had to protect themselves because they were different.

Each one I looked at had something off about them, something out of the ordinary. Whether it be an outrageous piercing or hair color, or maybe even a much too obvious scar, they were all focused on one thing: the stage in the front of the room.

After shuffling my way through so that I could get a good look, I noticed an average looking girl standing behind a single microphone. She appeared to have more confidence than I'd seen another person possess, and when she began to speak, I knew why – she had the right to.

I wasn't quite sure what had brought me to the Poetry House. Maybe it had been due to the week I'd spent with my mother, trying my best to get her off my back after I'd left the dinner. She'd told me that she forgave me, but she wasn't so sure that the Monroes would.

I knew that was her way of telling me that she was still angry and that that anger wasn't going to dissipate until I became the daughter she'd always seen herself raising. She'd also used whoever else had been involved to explain how she was really feeling.

Today was one of the days where I felt waterlogged, except I hadn't set foot in water since the summer before. It was as if I was weighing myself down, and somehow, that weight had latched itself onto my ankle and followed me even to the one place I'd never stepped foot in before.

I'd seen various advertisements for their “Wednesday Wam Slam” days. I'd never been a poet, too choked up to even voice my own feelings, but I'd always been curious about slam poetry. It gave me a breather and as I stared up at the stage with the other people, I wondered if they, too, noticed my flaws and all the things that stuck out about me.

After the girl finished her poem about a past boyfriend, I made my way over to the bar and took a seat. I prayed that I wouldn't be carded since I hadn't even invested in a fake ID, so when the bartender simply took my order, I let out a relieved sigh.

While I waited for my drink, I surveyed the room and found that a lot of the people were now moving around and socializing for the few minutes while the stage was empty. I caught the eye of the girl who'd just spoken, and she seemed to smirk, before she continued moving her eyes around the room as if she were trying to learn something.

I ordered the strongest thing on the menu and downed the drink in one large gulp when it finally came. It felt fulfilling and wrong at all the same time. I hadn't had a drink in the entire week spent with my mother and I'd even gone to another Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in that time, and yet I was allowing my resolve to crack at the mere sight of a bar stool.

As soon as I'd stepped foot into the Poetry House, I'd decided to have a drink. Maybe I'd even had my mind made up before that.

My attention was drawn from my drink and back up to the stage when a lanky boy – probably in his mid-teens, sixteen at the oldest – stepped onto the stage and began his slam poem.

His voice was louder and stronger than I'd expected, and I found myself riveted in my seat as I watched him speak. “It was the seventh grade when I realized I was drowning in myself,” He paused. “So I screamed and I fought my way through the sea of wrong and when I got to the dock where it all ended, I dropped into the sea beside it and found myself dragged down by the weight of another thing that I couldn't fix about myself,” He was animated by then, his arms moving in an excited fashion and his voice was rising with each word. His voice was filled with something that could only be described with the word passion and I found myself wondering what the boy had been through in his life.