I hadn’t spoken in days
I was home alone
And nobody called
When I parted my lips to cry out
They slowly stuck, cracked and dry
I gathered the shards of the mug from the floor
Sticking my wounded finger in my mouth
Searching for a bandage
Dragging the coffee across the floor with every step

There’s a practice called kintsugi
Where you take a shattered object
And fill the lines with gold
Leaving marks of past mistakes
Showing how we can all come back
And the beauty that comes out of them
But what if my marks
Just make me more ugly?

I feel vagrant
Passing through this world on my way to nowhere
Of the world, but not in it

I feel invisible
Passing through busses, trains, hallways
Yelling out ideas and opinions
But nobody hears them
My stories echo through the crowded halls
Mixing with the cacophony of nothingness

I feel empty
Devoid of anything but ache and stress
I’ve given all I had already
Yet my life is just beginning
So I pick up the scraps left behind
Hoping to salvage enough to make a whole feeling
But the pieces don’t fit
So I leave them where they were

I feel like I was born of the Earth
But I’m not here
And I’m not sure if I ever will again

I’ve run out of things to say
Sure I could tell you simple things,
I got into college,
No idea how to pay
But that’s boring

I want to be able to say
“I went to so and so’s party
Where we all got so ******* wasted”
But that’s not me

I want to be able to say
How much all of this helps me
Not just emotionally,
But physically too
Without this
I couldn’t sleep
I would be too hung up on stupid *******
But here I am
About to fall asleep
Wishing I had something to say

I keep thinking
Is there more to life than this
More that I can do
Here I am 4 months away from graduation
And all I can do is wonder
Is there more to life than this?
Sitting in my parent’s house
Writing ******* that will be read by only a few
Worrying about **** like “what do I need to do?”
Is there more than just hoping I survive each day?
Is there more that I would have done
If I were someone else?
In every class I hear
“Did you see what happened at the party”
Or
“You can stay over right?”
Every story I see party after party
Bowl smoked after bowl
And I wonder
What did I do to be home alone
In bed at 10 o’clock
Is there more than this that I can be
Is there more than this that I can experience
Is there more than this to being alive?

“Every body is a temple”
Something that gets said often
But my temple is old
Moss grows on the windows
And weathered steps lead to oaken doors
Laying off their hinges

With the right care,
The right exercise,
The dilapidated temple that is my body
Can grow stronger once again

You don’t want to read the long ones
You want the gist
You’re tired of hearing me *****
You want affirmation
Well here it is
Short, sweet, and to the ******* point

It’s all we want out of life
We don’t want to have to worry
“Did I do this right?”
“Do they actually like me?”
“Did I do all of my work?”
We want to be able to sit and relax
We want life to be simple
That way
We can stop giving a ****