I’m literally sitting here. Literally. I’m figuratively doing nothing. This time allows me to think. Contemplate; the future of this mess we call adolescence. You look at the clock. Tick tock…kids stepping over my feet, as I literally sit here. Figuratively doing nothing. I’m breathing. Writing. Forming a collection of words in this memo. They don’t fit together, realistically. I would go for a smoke, but I have no cigarettes. I am a sixteen year old, who is too awkward too phone her boyfriend’s home phone, and too awkward just to pop round. I have to see miss in an hour, there’s a kid who’s sad and I have to talk to him.
   Apparently I am confident. I’m not. I just listen to powerful music which makes me feel like I can be a queen. That’s the idea. To feel comfortable you need to not care, and look after yourself. You are queen, you care for your subjects. You rule with fair point. You go out and buy yourself a crown, or shoplift one. I don’t know, just whatever makes you feel like the main *****. Find what you like about yourself and spark it. Make what you like stand out. Find the things you dislike about yourself and show it off. I don’t like my **** but hey, just shake it a bit and it’s like simple twerking. I have thunder thighs which consist of a fair amount of muscle; I have perfected the **** drop. I have become stronger because of what I put myself through. I am the only one who can hear my thoughts. So if at first you’re thinking ‘******* I’m terrified, what if I look like a ****’ fake it.

After acting like this powerful alter ego you can become her. She takes over at times. I can switch between quiet, shy Sophia; into the proud, queen ***** Patricia. Patricia the stripper. I admit this is my alter ego. She wears red lipstick, a leopard coat and thigh highs. She owns a tiara and blows bubbles in her gum. She struts to punk music and breaths arctic monkeys. She dances to jack white, ***** wiggles and all. She sings Kate Nash and the kooks, because she needs to keep her showgirl ship with class and talent as well as outright hot radiation. She has no idea what she is doing, as long as everyone is happy and entertained; she is satisfied with her life. She loves everyone because they all contain a characteristic she adores.

I also have another alter ego who has no name. This is the first time I’m referring to her as her own alter ego. She’s like a ****** of crows. An unkind of ravens. She wears dangerously applied dark makeup. She always wears full black. She’s pretty much a Goth who thrives on shock, horror and Edgar Allen Poe. Her favorite author is Stephan king and she has murderous thoughts. She pouts. She is, oh so pouty; with darkened lips of a cherry flavor. She makes sassy comments which sometimes come out as unintended bitchiness. She scares people, but they call her cool. She’s a bass player, with a strong stance and a black bra and thong set. She smokes like a chimney. She has ash-ened dark lungs like her mind. She’s my biting ***** ego. She hates anything that’s negative in the human spectrum of life. Ironic. She can’t stand hate but embodies it. She smiles at kids playing or people busking. Under the black shell intended to scared, she has the interior of a marshmallow. Fluffy hair, pastel teddy choker, and a love for giggling. She smells or strawberries, cherries and bubble-gum. She is actually really happy; this drives people mad as they can’t label her…neither can I, unless this pinkie paradise is one of her own. Like all my egos…she is happy.

At the end of this time with ????, I will look back on my emotions and force myself to believe they’re lies; this is in order to save me the burden of missing him but no, they’re the biggest lies I will ever force myself to tell. I think I love him. I love him like a friend. No. I love him like a…I’ve never loved someone before so I cannot make a comparison. I don’t know my limits or boundaries. Love is a limitless emotion. We have the capacity to love all with no end. I love everyone. I love ????. I want him to drown me with his presence, but I don’t want to dominate his time. I see him rarely in comparison to, most of the people that go about this relationship business- even those long-distancers with their Skype.
Whenever I do see him I want to hide in his arms, his kiss, his passion, his slumber. I want to lie on a space of grass with him, smoke and stare at the sky. We will look at the blue for so long that when we come down and look at each others faces we can see the sun circles fill our pupils. Then they will clear, revealing the space in our eyes. Unlimited life, galaxies and possibilities. We will claim we can see the future, our souls intertwined in a dance of laughter and stumbling. We ignore the stumbling, unsure of what disagreement may do to us. We debate, but on meaningless things which just spark our conversation and ends up in heated kissing.
I’m scared of his eyes. I will die in those eyes, when he inevitably leaves me for a pretty girl with a smaller **** and bigger rack. But then I see us bumping into each other in town later; he left the girl and wants someone less vapid. I giggle, he chuckles. We look at each others eyes, and like blinking back the burning sun spots we blink back our old, shared feelings. Our terrestrial sphere. Our insides whine, we ache, and we leave, part. A weeknight later I go to a party, I get drunk, I see him. Sun circles. I sit in the garden in my solitary hallucination, smoking the hell out of a pack and imploding into ash-ened lungs. I see him again, meters away, smoking. I call his name, he wanders over; and then we drink ourselves blind and make out. It starts again the same way. I worry.
I love to say his name, it’s like my tongue has turned to smoke and is floating away from my mouth in dissipating curls; I don’t say his name often. If he says my name I disintegrate, my shell chips away, my love for him increases. When he laughs and his face cracks into light, I want him. I want him to want me. I want him to think about me when I’m not around. I want to make him happy. I want him to love me. I want him to lust for me. I don’t want him to hurt.
He used to hurt himself when he was a small kid. He burned and he cut his neck. He was hospitalized a lot. He moved from Scotland when he was young. His favorite color is purple. His ex was…I just don’t want him to hurt. I ache when he tells me about everything that hurts him and I don’t know what to do. I don’t want him to hurt…I want him to skin me alive and use my layers as a blanket; if that means I can comfort him then, so be it. If that was the only way, I would let him, just so long as he can drown and suffocate his hurt. I will strip and hold the blade against the flesh myself if it spare him the damage. It’s such a ****** way to think, but my heart and brain agree that I would do anything to make him happy.
I would time travel, and cuddle him before he even started entertaining the thought of harming himself. I will dress up as one of the main ***** fairies from Zelda – I don’t ******* know, those fairies creep me out. If one of them told me not to hurt myself I wouldn’t out of fright towards that face. Argh those fairies faces…
...????….
You’re turning me obsessive; I smell your scent and I feel like you’re wrapping yourself around me. You’re so, so, so intelligent; I don’t care that you think you’re not…you are okay. You are the most intelligent guy I’ve ever met and ever will meet. You’re a sucker for keeping people happy, and that’s adorable as ****. You will never leave someone looking a bit sad, you will strive to make them smile and spark their inner fire. You’re a lighter. You’re someone everyone needs in their life at some point. Those who are lucky enough to share your time own the world, you are the greatest honor to accompany. I will continue to praise you because you are the embodiment of good. I would say perfect but, you’d argue against it. Why? No-ones perfect, but people are amended, think karma…yours is balanced. You’re perfect for your friends, your elders, your peers and me. I am an unrequited love for your entity. You drive me mad; mad with every emotion I can think of. I feel so happy. With you. Happy. Light. Sun circles. Usually I’m empty. Passive. What I know for sure is that, I love you.

The power's out, I see them now;
They're lighting up the sky.
An hour 'bout, I don't know how,
Has quickly passed us by.
Those kids will shout, but they will learn,
And hopefully their parents yearn
For wealth to crumble up and burn
While staring at this starry sky.

The businesses' sarcophagi
Has no more stranglehold
On us for now, though soon it's nigh
To lose ourselves in bold-
ened signs that tell us what to do
And what to buy and who to sue.
But let's not worry, let's renew
While staring at this starry sky.

To be
Or not
Is get
-ting caught
In webs
Of thought
An I'm
At such
A loss
It seems
That some
-One else
Is boss
Yet proof
Is not
In the
Right sauce
It lies
With those
Who say
They're not
A hard
-ened heart
Or a
Cold part
And yet
To save
Their soul
From harm
They don't
Turn down
My thoughts
Which weave
Like yarn
Yet break
Like thread
Nor do
They de
-ny my
Strange but
Strong ties
To all
Things fra
-gile and
Too wild
For I
Am not
From where
They are
But they
See this
As met
-aphor
When it's
Quite ve
-ry lit
-eral
The last
Or the
Ori
-ginal
So let
Me just
Leave you
With this
You came
From your
Mother-
I came
From a
Place called
A word
That is
Not in-
Vented
Yet.

I often wondered if I would miss
You when I at last did leave,
Your fields and charm and spirit
-ed voices and songs.
I often felt I would flee with
Joy high in my heart
-ened sigh and feared I lost
My love for your soft lands.
But now as time approaches
Ever looming, beckoning me on
-ward to a new place to become
My own; I still remember fondly
The home where I grew and found my
Self.
Despite your cracking features,
your old and broken
-hearted soul;
I still will miss my home,
As I build a new house
-hold to keep me warm.

Cater to the last breath of me
I need it
I'm sorry

Take me for granted later
I swear Ill be here for that

When is it
Where are you
I need you to look at my wicked darkness

I ened you to see
What's underneath
This cloak of gold

I don't want to see myself anymore
I just want to twokroutside of mnyself
Isn't that the way it's supposed to be

Who says though
Who says that's the way
There is a through line of this madness
A passerby quality that
Allows me to connect

Me to you

And I want to

I want to see you on the passng pedestal
The rearing bus
The skyward glance in muscular tubes
In train yard degradation

In smiles through the drive through

I want to see you through all of you

I want to scream into the night
And be met with scream back

Your absent hours are beginning to
Take a toll on me
And they are beginning

To take a toll on you

I see it in your gait - sideways and forlorn

We cannot wait for love
For love
Does not wait for we

There is no beckoning for the ******
There is no call to the sea or land
There is just us, a waiting for direction
Lo'
Guidance has no spur
Save from within

When you are younger, still,
and the school system is trying to teach you
wrong from right,
bad from good,
black from white, no dulled grey edges --
they tell the students to fess up to their crimes.
they tell their students to own up to their actions.
they tell you that blame is pointless:
that what has been done has been done.
                                                           ­                 and you, at 6, and you, at 7,
so very young, still, so very unaware how all your classmates
                                                                ­                                              hate you
you take it all to heart.

and if your 2nd grade teacher derides you for the colour of your skin --
when the chair falls, when the pens are pushed off your desk
you straighten it. you pick them up.
when food gets bumped, accidentally pushed, lands on the floor
you are the first to the paper towel rack, first apologising, first to fix it.
when you are running away, sprinting fast down forbidden corridors
and the other girl is running after you in the halls
you say it was your idea.
take all of Teacher's harsh words so the other girl doesn't.

And if your 2nd grade teacher looks down on you the entire year:
for your hair, for your clunky words, for the colour of your eyes.
maybe, you will think, maybe, looking back--
maybe you didn't help your case.

And maybe those actions were kindness, but none were bravery.
All of them were you, negating the blame.
Saying: actions are actions are actions have happened.
Saying: excuses are worthless, fine -- so let me fix this instead.

There was no point in blame so there was
no blame so
instead you decided
all my fault.

Here, now, in the harsh cold present --
there is a pandemic. there are people dying.
there is the news and there are your relatives,
both of them pointlessly, endlessly, arguing politics.
there was a flood, before, and an earthquake and a death.
there were schools, blurring behind your eyes because there were so many.
and friends. lost, and not.

And sometimes, the helplessness engulfs you whole.
And sometimes, the amount of rage simmering under your skin
is enough for you to tremble and shake with that power,
is enough to almost make you forget why not, why never,
is enough for you to lash out (with your words)
and hurt someone.
So you bite it back and swallow it all
(because not today, because you will NOT lose anyone today)
and you think my fault
until your breathing is calm, steadied.
until the breaking point is buried back, deep beneath your skin.
until the emptiness washes over you, back to resigned, hollow, sadness.

I have done this, you tell yourself, because
even if no one is at fault, and
even if the world is to blame
you never want to become someone who blames the world:
never want to become someone to throw down a gauntlet,
to say, "I have been wronged." to say, "This is what I deserve."
You never want to become someone who thinks they are owed --
because you are not.
because you are owed the same as anyone else and that is  n o t h i n g.

and if this saves you, this thing they did not mean to teach you at school
(and maybe it is self-loathing. and maybe it is self-deprecation.)
if this stops you from that, this twisted version of responsibility
if this helps any other person along the way --
you think it's enough.

I wear my friends like a diadem
yours like a solar system
though somehow, they break the universal law
something glitched in the G
denatures it to P

In a tower defense game, you’d be
the princess, and i the net
of arrows, axes, lasers hotter than life
itself. Did you know my
lover designs lasers?

The sizzles in my neck are all the
more obvious for it. I
got my paper back today. At the top was
a name with my ego
cut to ribbons, beside.

I see someone and know they’re your friend
(Don’t have Sister’s condition
but my heart unknits itself anyway.) We
decay together each
time we improve ourselves.

They speak a name and it’s now a sheath
through which I see the point of
a nose, teeth change color, stacks of blood from your
sharp tear ducts. It’s fishnets
which look like chainmail. It’s

a lot of work perming my hair for
weeks at a time—sowing discourse
like a full-time job. Chaining myself to an
anonymous statue
is a lot of work. When

I wrapped my head like the foam around
a pear, my upper lip short-
ened to reveal my front teeth (the chip polished
porcelain,) it was a
lot of work. Breath in, breathe

out. She’s always a woman to me.
Tuberculosis, asthma,
paxlovid. You cannot sleep, there may be
princesses around. I
ought to smash this circlet.