Stained wood with cinnamon

 I'm from a place that is grey. The place of fake smiles that hid massive, dirty consciences. I come from a place where happiness comes bought and lost, and the American dream is just that. To business trips with the secretary and widowers lies. The fact that mommy drinks and daddy works, both hoping to go before the other, so they can grab the cash and split from the kids as they try to forget what made them so unhappy.
I come from a place where the ash trees were our playground. But now they die in the thousands and their childhood dies alongside them. I'm from a place where once we roamed like explorers, but now we row the slave ship forward.
I come from a place where good Christian boys fight good Christian boys for good Christian girls and the right to open their good Christian thighs. Where those good Christian girls want his love but only get as far as a bottle and a backseat will go back.
I come from a place of stained wood and sweet words. Of spaghetti with cinnamon and vulgar dinner conversations. Of Christmas with large families and the harboring of drunk teens with their bottles of Smirnoff and cheap champagne; the kind that makes you look for studs with your hands and not the finder. 
I come from brick walls and rooms inside of rooms. From a place where dreams and records shriveled in the sun. And the blank-faced Bullhorns are only there for the pay and to give their miserable grades that fuck you out of summer. A place where the children sang of fucking your sister and how your dead mother was a whore. 
I come from twisted roots and angry men. Who always wished to breathe free from the coal mines and textile mills that strangled their dreams in their sleep. Of 14-hour days and drug addict bosses. To going to war to build a life, to a 19 birthday that was spent on north avenue beach in an old jalopy. 
I come from a place that is grey, a place of brick walls with good Christians with good Christian thighs, twisted roots, and angry men, and slept in a home that smelled of stained wood and cinnamon.