Sticky fingers and serrated knives

My mom always told me that sticky fingers never made her house into a home.

Boy was she right.

Sticky fingers turned into sticky situations just as fall abruptly gets kicked in the uterus by winter.

Everything always escalates.

I remember when my house was a home. When the lawn was cut, the dishes were done and the blinds were a little bit more dusty than they should've been. My fingers weren't sticky because my mom would wipe them off. I can almost still feel the wet wipes burn in my cuts and taste like bleach when I'd lick my hands. However, I didn't mind.

No I mean I really didn't mind. I didn't mind my mom the way a tree tells its leaves not to fall. No matter what, spring always dies and gravity soon takes its toll on what used to be a caterpillars main course. Picking leaves off one by one. Only for someone else to rake them into piles. I think my mom just got tired of raking. The hours she spent trying to rake me into place, and all I wanted to do was play in the wind. But that's what leaves are supposed to do, right?

Come to think of it, I remember the day she stopped wiping my hands off. The day my house was no longer a home.

I still remember the look on her face when she walked in so slouched her shoulder blades practically dragging on the floor. I was so sticky, but she just walked in her room, shutting the door behind her. I was a little girl crying on the outside of a locked door. Looking at the mess on my hands, prying my fingers apart like tires on hot tar, only to close my fingers and repeat the process.

I used to paint on my hands. Get them sticky just to see if my mom would wipe them off. She didn't. I tested her, and she failed.

My house became sticky, the lawn grew tall; prickly with weeds, and my dishes piled high. More dust collects on the blinds that I just decided they'll remain shut.

I felt a wedge between every single member of my family. They stopped saying please and thank you, and started carrying weapons with them. With every smart ass remark is another smart ass comeback. Trying to flaunt how serrated  their knives can be.

They sharpen their knives with their sticky fingers in their houses with the blinds dusty and shut, but yet are confused as to why I stay in bed all day.

My mom always told me not to play with knives, because we'll get cut, or cut other people.

And boy, was she right.

They'll continue to cut people just as I'll continue to walk around with jam on my hands without a wet wipe in sight.

Metaphors are for the birds now.