[mousepoet]: 243.mousey's Poetry.This is Life Contest entry

I don't really consider this a poem. It has even less rythm than most of my free-verse stuff, and I speak more casually. but it's certainly not prose. So I'm not sure what it is. Oh well. You decide.

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I wonder how things would have been different
If I hadn’t grown up in the home that I did.
The bougainvillea out back,
Twisting like snakes and raspberry bushes,
The grass that died in the summer,
And the stained, wooden gate,
Marking the limit of my escapades,
Chalk dust that turned to paint under the eye
Of the hose on the cement.

But that doesn’t matter now, does it?
I still can’t quite believe what I want to believe
With everything I’ve got.
(No matter how many times I tried,
The gate still swung shut behind me, didn’t it?)
I want to believe it all so badly,
But it’s all twisted up in the raspberry bushes
And the snakes have got me by the faith
And won’t let go.
And when I cry in the shower
No one knows the difference,
And when I’m quiet in discussion time
They think that’s how I’ve always been.
The little gray house on the cul-de-sac gets shabbier,
And the sun still burns the grass,
And the bougainvillea is taking over
The back wall.

Soon I’ll be driving
(Finally beyond the gate)
And I’ll still wonder,
And I’ll still cry through the steam,
And the snake in my head will whisper again
And tell me of the sun on red petals
With inch-long thorns
That I caught myself on
No matter how careful I was.