Tears
Headaches
Homework for hours
Trying so hard
Just to be heard

Trying to make friends
Trying to be social
So difficult when your not normal
The things you have to tell yourself
To keep yourself together
"It's okay
Your okay
Everything's okay"
All lies

Concerned looks from your mother
As you say that yes, today was the same
You can tell she's trying not to cry
Guilty

Procrastination
Lack of motivation
Working so hard for this presentation
And for everything else
Even when it all gets deleted in my head immediately after

The crowded hallways
You can barely squeeze your way through
They're so loud
And full of people
Most yelling
Some banging on lockers
Jammed
Like my head

Painted spirals on the wall
Not as real as mine

The death date I assigned to myself when I was
what, 10 years old?
I told myself I would die one way or another.

Most likely by my own hands.

Because I had no purpose here.
Because I was too weak for this world.
Because the pain and weight were too much.
Because nobody seemed to care all that much.
Because those who had only cared for the false parts of me.
Because those who truly had didn't want to live either.
Because I was tainted by those who were thought to have cared.
Because it was the only way to be truly free.

I would play pretend to be adults with my "boyfriend".
Would play dance with knives and needles on my arm.
Would make candy out of painkillers.
Would imagine myself to be Icarus when meeting with high ledges, flying then
                                falling.
Would dream about that date,
01/04/2026.
My 16th birthday.

No 10 year old should be doing that,
I don't think.

I am heavy
with hurt.
Both mines, and yours

And the hurt of
My mother,
a woman who deserves commited love.
And my father,
a boy who shouldn't have starved.
And my grandmothers,
girls that grew up too fast and too far away from home.

And the for all the children of the world,
all of us whose ability to love others and ourselves in a silly, gentle, erratic, genuine, inperfect, beautiful way was lost with boxed up toys and discarded sugary cereal boxes.

And for the world,
a once beautiful place that has been forced to endure careless brutality and abuse that is now scarred and broken and yet is still fighting for itself.

Like all the children of the world
Like my grandmothers
Like my father
Like my mother
Like you
Like me.

It's a heavy load to carry,
But I'm not planning to give in any time soon.

when I die
I will decompose
and be made
into something alive

I am living
made out of
decomposed bits
of dead things.

is anything ever really dead?
is anything ever really alive?

I don't know.

but my heart beats
and the earth breathes
just the same.