...






I really don’t know where to begin
Life *****, I guess
I don’t know
...
...
...
Is there anything left to say?

Until there’s only one of them

Until I’m free to speak my mind

Until I don’t have to go around in fear

Until I don’t have to avoid parts of the city

Until I can talk to my friend again

I can’t wait

24 hours
1,440 minutes
86,400 seconds
And you’re gone
And I know we’ve been warring,
But I just want you to know that I didn’t want this
Any of this aftermath
To happen
I’m not trying to make amends,
Because *******, you cheating *******,
But still
None of this was planned
But now there’s only 86,400 seconds you’re here
I hope you treated her well

It’s 2016 again
I’m in 8th grade
The last time I was truly myself
— Truly happy—

Standing at that desk
Just talking to my old best friend, Nick,
Though he went by Nicky then
About the sound of one hand clapping
The election, and how ****** up Trump is
Our plans to hang out and play D&D over the weekend

Ms. Johnson, my favorite teacher, walking in with her tea
The brown liquid perfectly poured into a clear glass mug
Tom raises his hand
“Ms. J, are you drinking whiskey?”
We all laugh at the preposterous question
And we go on with our day

English, math, history, science, PE, and Spanish
The classes fly by
Tristian and I go to my house
Sit in front of the Tv and play Mario Bros
Not a care in the world
Homework could wait until tomorrow

When he leaves I start prepping for tomorrow’s game
My parents come home and cook dinner
My sister emerges from her room to eat
We watch a show
And I go to bed

Things were simpler then
Things were better then
Can we go back?

What a ******* year

“Supposed to be a happy new year!”
But then why does it feel even more depressing than the last one
Happy New Years

1
It’s only been two hours

As much as I hate you, I’m going to miss you

To get a piece of paper
That says I know ****
For $30000 a year
Why is it so ******* expensive?
I know why,
Because when the workers know their worth,
When they can teach others how much they are worth,
They demand more
And those making my ******* college expenses a day
Don’t want to pay us a penny more

And I won’t even be here to see you go

Then... I don’t know what

It’s four months later
And I still remember that dream
The one where I ****** a friend
While we were in a park in downtown
Because we both needed it

I still remember the words we spoke
The sound of the birds fluttering through trees
The feeling of the cold air breezing through our hair
The taste of his mouth inside mine
I still remember the time of day as we stared into each other’s eyes

I don’t know why I remember
It feels like torment though
To remember so vividly
Just driving my lust

It’s been four months
I still haven’t told him about it
Not because I’m afraid of his reaction
But because he’s happy
And he doesn’t need me to **** his life

545,572,800  Seconds I’ve been alive
545,572,800  Seconds I’ve wasted

Until He leaves

Less than a week to go

Until you’re gone forever

The clock continues even if you text me and tell me I have problems

Until I can tell her “two months isn’t long enough to get upset over” like she did to me

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa­aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa­aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa­aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa­aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa­aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I can no longer eat them
A bag of cookies
We ate them
The day of my first kiss

We were at school
Of all places for this story to start
In the college office
Whenever we were in there
Clara put on headphones to block us out
I now know that she did it
Because she couldn’t stand to watch
This, all of this, happen to me
But I digress

We sat in the college office
You, me, and Karol
You said you had to go
To clean your room
But we could come with
So we followed you home

I hadn’t been up there before
But it’s all burned in my brain
The door opened
Clothes thrown across the floor
Two beds, one for you the other for your brother
A shelf packed with stuff
A TV sitting on a stand
The dresser in the closet and another under a window

Karol and I sat on your bed as you cleaned the room
You brought up the cookies and apples
Set them on the dresser
You handed me two rings
Just too small for my fingers
I still have them, somewhere
They sit in a box alone
I wish I could put these memories with them

When the room was clean
Karol left to go sleep in the van
Leaving us alone
We moved the furniture
The beds rotated to a new wall
The dresser sat between them
The TV and shelf sat in an alcove
They fit so perfect you would think it was made for them
Then we laid on your bed
We put on American Dad on Hulu
The one where Stan had to put his kid’s best friend in the witness protection program
And we laid there for hours
Eating this bag of animal crackers that you brought up for us all to eat
You held me as my back fit in against your chest
I felt your cheek against mine
I turned to look at you
And we kissed like nothing else mattered
Then we sat there like nothing happened
But of course it had

I remember your tongue
Wrestling it’s way into my mouth
Our glasses clanking together as lip met lip
We shed them and we laid there together
eating the cookies
But now you’re gone
And I can’t eat them without thinking of you

We live in a world where people are killed
Based on the color of their skin
We live in a world where people live on the streets
Because they were evicted for no reason
We live in a world where people can’t report crimes
Without fear of being deported
We live in a world where people are afraid to speak
Because they fear that they’ll be told their lying
We live in a world where people would rather commit suicide
Than admit that they’re attracted to the same gender
Or because they don’t feel right in their body
We live in a world where someone seeking a better life
Is detained because someone thought they should be

The world is broken
We have to fight to fix it

As someone who uses Snapchat
A word of advice
Always look at who sent the snap
If I had
I could’ve avoided sending a half naked picture
To someone who didn’t need to see it
Instead of the close friend

We say what comes to mind
No filter for our thoughts
But we don’t need one
We haven’t yet discovered who we are
We discover our feet
Our hands
Our mouth
Our tongue
We discover how to walk
To talk
To ride a bike
We have no sense of urgency
The hardest pain may be when we fall
May be when someone leaves
May be when someone dies
But we always got back up
We always filled the gap the person left
We always recovered

This was unexpected
A sudden break between acts
The stage goes dark
The curtain falls
And nobody knows when it will rise again

You have taken the first hit
Gotten your first high
Leaving you wanting more when life beats you
You want more, but can’t get any
You wish that when people asked you about their lives
You knew how to help
Life just seems to keep you down
Shattering you

Someone sees through our mask
And so we reveal everything to them
Only with them are you yourself
Only with them do you let them see underneath
But once they see, they leave
Until another takes their place
Rinse and repeat

And so our show continues
With essays to be written
Forms to fill out
Applications to be submitted
Letters to be written
All while you try to balance other things—
Homework,
A social life,
Sleep
From now on
We get no time for those

We know who we are
We have a filter around family
Cutting out the curses and the ***** jokes
We have facades for our different groups
We put it on like a costume
Covering our feelings
Covering our emotions
Changing who we are
We only realize we had it on when we take it off
By then it’s too late
It’s become us

We have grown
We develop tastes and opinions
We have an imagination that can get us into trouble
We still don’t need a filter though
We don’t know why we would

We are all addicted
But not to any drug or drink
To a screen
Light up, look
Light up, look
We all do it
Wait for that snap
That text
That tweet
Light up, look
Light up, look
Slaves to a screen
Unable to put them down
Fear that we won’t know things that happen
If we just put down our phones

Why am I the one my friends come to?
I have no experience with their problems
All I can say is that I’m there for them
Not always what they want to hear
Sometimes I can give them *******
Things viewed only in movies and tv
Yet they come back for more
Again and again
I get a text saying “can I ask you a question?”
I always respond the same
“Shoot”
As in “shoot for it”
Or maybe it means I was hoping you wouldn’t
Who knows

I have no clue what you look like
Or what your voice sounds like
But you care
We’ve both been hurt
But together we can pick up the pieces,
And fix our broken selves

Though I’ve never truly met you,
Seen your face,
Heard your voice,
Felt your touch,
I feel better knowing you’re there

What does the afterlife hold?
Is it splendors for all
Individualized little worlds for us to live?
Do we get to go back and relive our best days?
Are we reunited with old friends
Waiting to swap life stories like no time had passed?
What does the afterlife hold?
Are we reborn?
Walking the world eternally
Each reincarnation slightly different from the last
Taking the form of our truest love from the last life we lived
Our memories mostly forgotten, but a few hanging on to guide our new body
What does the afterlife hold?
What if there isn’t one?
This is it, and all there ever will be
Short spans of consciousness with nothing before and nothing after
Our bodies and souls dying together
What does the afterlife hold?
A question asked for centuries, but you can only die to know

Something to count on
Just something that tells me
“It gets better, maybe not much, but enough”
In times so bleak I need something to count on
Someone to say I’ll be okay, WE will be okay
But I look out
A sea of people who want to help
Yet I feel like I’m still drowning
I just need someone to hold me
And provide a little comfort

I may not have money
I may not have power
I may not have the strongest willpower
But
I have heart
I have brains
I have my poetry
All I have
I offer
To you
To “She”
I hope it’s enough
To keep you happy
All I need is you

All I want in life
Is for my friends to be successful
I want them to be able to come to me in 20 years
I want them happy, healthy, doing things on their own terms
And that one friend who doesn’t
I want them to be able to say to me one day
“I need help”
Because I don’t care about myself anymore
I only care that the people I love are doing perfect

All I want
Is to be held in someone’s arms

I almost caught myself
Asking someone to come and change me
To make me who I’m not
Because I need to be someone else
Then I realized, only 3 more months
Then I can be who I am
Without having to hide it from anyone

Here we are
Another Friday full of parties
And I’m all alone
Sitting on my couch with my phone and my thoughts
And all I can think of is a single question:
Who the **** did I *******?

I see story after story
Post after post
Of people eating drinking and being merry,
People I know
People I thought would invite me to ****
Yet here I am alone
And my thoughts grow darker the more my screen lights up
And all I can wonder is
Why am I alone?

I am utterly and completely alone
No amount of jokes or conversation will change that
I guess some cosmic being said “**** him”
And wandered off
Leaving me to fend off giants of depression
With but a few witty remarks
But it’s too strong
And as it beats me people stand by and watch
Because I’m damaged goods now
And I don’t deserve any ******* help
No matter how much I plead
And I ask over and over
Why won’t you do something?
Why are you just standing there?

The beast holds me down
Pushing me deep into the earth
And people watch from the edge of the crater depression made
As I claw and struggle to free myself from its grasp
And I give up
Because no matter how much I try
How much I beg
What jokes I make
I can’t win alone
And nobody’s there to help

I won’t have that moment
When I walk across the stage
Looking out at the audience
Searching for the faces of my family

I won’t hear my aunts yell out
“Whoooooeeeeeee” when I grab my diploma
I won’t be able to thank my principal
I won’t be able to see my closest friends
As they do the same

I won’t have the moment
When I walk out to the auditorium
Where I’m blinded by the lights
That pave my way to the future

I won’t have my moment
When I realize
Who I’ve become

You can memorize the face of a stranger
After seeing them for six seconds
Six months later they’re in your dream
Making you wonder what if you had talked to them
Your brain creates scenes of lifelong friendship
Another where they’re your nemesis
One where you go out a few times,
But they never call back
Then in a flash
Their face is gone
As if you’d never seen them
And life goes on

Take me out
Three words
Two meanings

Take me out
**** me
Stab me in the heart
Throw me off a cliff
Stop my pain

Take me out
Date me
Fill my heart
Look at the city on the cliff tops
Stop my pain

Take me out
Either way
I win

And so you’re gone
To Hell I hope, though I know that’s not true
You said that I could never escape you
That you were going to make my life miserable
But how are you going to do that
From 2,300 miles away?
Are you going to have her yell at me?
Have you’re “friends” hate me?
Do you really think that they will?
What did I ever do to them?
The only ones I hurt were you and her
And now you are gone
So go ahead and do your worst.
This will be the last time you hear from me
So goodbye *******