It’s exhausting…
Being two people at once.

The person who holds love at her fingertips
who lives each day for a better tomorrow
who believes, with her entire heart
that people are good and strong, and beautiful

And the person unable to feel it.
Who believes that tomorrow will never come
That can’t see past all the evil,
and the death,
and the broken.

I’m the person who lives and breathes
the words on a page;
who longs to meet these characters
my brain conjured up.
The ones who hold me
until I feel safe…

But I’m also the person terrified
of getting them wrong.
Of their flaws, of their desires.
I’m terrified that they’re a reflection of me,
and I’m nowhere near perfect.
That underneath their safety and security
they hold my evil,
the evil even I don’t know I own.

I’m terrified of being wrong.
Of lighting a candle at both ends
and using each to start a fire;
one which is sure to engulf me
piece by piece
until I’m nothing more than a burn
and a bit of wax, a braided string.

What if I’m a stain
on the fabric of our earth.
On the hands of my family,
my friends.

I’m trying to hold myself together,
I am.
I’ve lit the candle.
I’m taking deep breaths.
It’s balancing, holding.

Yet one tilt is all it’ll take,
a sad drip of wax,
to come crashing right down.
And I’ll be sitting under it when it does.

I don’t want to date you.

And no, before you ask,
it’s not because I’m ace
although I am.

It’s because when I say no,
—and I’ve said no—
I mean no.

It’s because when I say
that you are my only friend on campus
I mean it.
My friend.

It means when I ghost you
for the entire summer
it’s because I’ve asked you time
and time again
to stop.

So stop.

Because I said no.
Because I meant no.
Because I mean no.

So no.

I will not answer your text.
I will not go to your house.
I will find someone else
who I can trust,
because it’s not,
and it will never
be you.

There are days in which it seems as if the whole world is falling down.
These are the days in which the ceiling crumples at my feet.
The days where everything I’ve ever known,
my very sense of being
is destroyed.

Who am I?
I thought I knew.
I have lived over seven-thousand days traveling on this earth.
Seven-thousand days as myself.
How didn’t I know?

My entire life,
one could say I was boy crazy.
Has that changed?
I have never been one to change childhood crushes every other week.
If I had a crush, it either lasted years,
or it never existed at all.

Just a wanting.
A wanting to feel.
A wanting to love.

But I can love.
I love my friends, my family.
I love the stories I read,
the characters I create,
the fabric of our reality.
I love being alive.
But I don’t love like that.
And I want to.

Now, I watch as the dust starts to settle.
I kick the white powder at my feet,
starting to regain my breath.

Focus, breathe.
You’re okay. I’m okay.
This is me. I am real.
This is me. I am real.

In the corner, by the rubble,
a slip of cardstock lies innocently.
Cardstock.
This is what my life has succumbed to.
A piece of paper with three humps and a tail.

I am okay.
I will learn to love myself.
I will learn to be proud.

Maybe one day this card will slip away,
the rubble will disappear,
and I will wonder what the fuss was all about.

But not today.
Today I will hold this card close.
I will slip a metal band around my fingertip.
I will do what I do best
and learn, and love, and feel.
Because that’s all we can ever do.
We can grow.
I want to grow.

Do you ever just
feel sad?

I feel like I’m in this
perpetual state of
waiting.

Like I’m early for an appointment
but I don’t know when it’s for
or what it is.

There is so much heartbreak
and death
and pain
in this world.

It feels like an endless spiral
and I don’t know when it’ll stop.

I just want it to stop.
To end.

For the misery,
and the clouds
and the sickness
and the hate
to go the **** away.

Why is there so much hate in this world?
How can there be a God if there’s never any light?
Because I don’t see a light.

But I’m looking.

That is where I find my solace.
That I’m looking.

I’m obsessed with fictional characters.
There’s just something about knowing nothing’s real,
and having the solace that any misfortune
goes away when you close the page,
and any joy you can take with you on your day.

On days like today, I need that.
I need to jump into a book,
to pretend like my world isn’t real,
like those that want to hurt the ones I love aren’t real,
that this hate, and injustice, and fear
is all just a figment of my imagination.

I shouldn’t beg for a fictional dictator to materialize into my world.
I shouldn’t believe that someone who was written to be evil
is better than those living.
But I do.

Because how can people be this evil.
How can there be this much hate?
How can people hurt others,
for what?
What do they gain by putting others down?
What do they gain by making the world a worse place?

…I don’t have an answer,
and I don’t think I want to know one.
All I know is that I’m going to keep fighting.
Today, and always,
until those I love, and those I will never get a chance to meet
have the same rights as everyone else.
Until the world is a place I want to live in.
Until the world is so perfect, it’s almost fictional.
Until I don’t want to leave.

Open eyes. Open window.
The birds chirp.
Someone, somewhere, cuts their grass.
A child plays. Laughter.

Open book.
Yesterday, one about love.
Today, a dystopian future where
people shroud in their house with fear.
Sound familiar?

Check my phone.
A text about linguistics.
How to pronounce an “R”
for a language I’ll never know.
Useful information for a different time.

Open the news.
100,000 dead.
Over 40 times as many from Pearl Harbor.
Over 33 times as many as 9/11.
Both horrible tragedies from before your time.
Both with more emotion connected in your brain.
I wonder if I’ve forgotten how to feel.

Another article.
Another man dead.
Another targeted for bird watching.
Another day I long for change.
To do: check your stigmas.
Don’t be like them.
Be human.
Be real.

Open book. Flip page.
Character reminds me of a simpler time.
High school. Friendship.
To do: text friends.
Maybe I’ll see them again someday.

Close book.
Tired of reading a troubled world
too similar to my own.

What else to do?
Take pictures?
This is not a time worth remembering.
Watch videos?
There isn’t another world to escape to.
Check news.
Tear gas. Moment of silence.
I can still feel. Wipe tear.

I’m done.
I’m done with the death.
I’m done with the destruction.
I’m sick of guns, and wars, and sickness, and isms.
I’m done hoping the world will change;
the world will be better.
Because it did, and it’s not.

Where will our world be in five years?
In ten?
Tomorrow?
Do I even want to know?
Because every time I take a step closer to believing
that we are good,
realty piles on top of me.
I see everything I have to privilege to ignore.
I see it all at once.

I love humans.
I love our differences; I love our flaws.
I love that we can talk to anyone in the world,
at a push of a button,
but I also hate it at the same time.
On days like today,
I don’t want to know what’s happening.
I want to stay in my bubble,
away from all the bad.

Open my book and pretend it’s all there is.
The darkness is just fiction.
Hope that one day, that will be true.

I miss you, and you’re not even real.
I miss your eyes, which soften at my glance.
I miss your sinister smile,
the fine lines that appear when
you tug the edges of your lips into a grin
that’s reserved only for me.

I miss your warm embrace,
your soft kiss,
and your **** witty remarks,
which are placed perfectly every time.

I love you, and you’re not even real.
I love you, and you’re not even mine.
I know you, and I want you to know me too,
but you can’t; because you’re words on a page.

You’re a figment of some else’s imagination
that’s planted in my brain and refused to let go.

But feel free to stay for as long as you like.
And if one day you magically become real,
I’ll be waiting right here,
ready for whatever life brings us,
Together.