you mourn for the things others have.

a young love, reciprocated.
the feeling of being wanted and wanting.

dinner dates and laying out under the stars.
being able to hold hands.

knowing that you have someone waiting to see you.

romanticized ideals of love, undoubtedly,
yet things you never came close to having.

you mourn for the things you watched others have,
because you know you will not have them.

we talk and laugh and make jokes
and the whole time
it’s like there’s this under current
beneath my feet
threatening to pull me out
pull me down

if i’m not careful
if i stop treading water
if i let down my guard
i get swept out to sea

and have to spend ages
swimming back in
to safety

easier to just keep my guard up
keep treading
don’t look down
don’t let yourself fall

up and down
forever falling

peaks and valleys
never reaching

crests and waves
always breaking

silly blue bird
don’t you know
warmth and laughter
have no end

you cannot divide it
like chocolate
to be carefully parceled out
and unlike chocolate
when you run out

you simply make more

A tragedy of the world and passage of time
of things that disappear from memory,
a pain i can not fathom.

The ones that die raging in the night,
that are unspoken for
or unheard.

The language of a people,
no longer spoken.

The traditions of a nation,
no longer practiced.

The culture of a family,
erased by time.

Things that have been eradicated
beyond life
and can never be reborn.
Things once so precious
that are almost entirely gone from the world.

How do you reconcile the genocide of a culture?

i walk around and i feel like a caricature of myself
playing at someone i’m supposed to be

ask a stranger on the street “who do you see me as”
and i’ll perform magnificently

you ask how i am
and the first thought through my head is how should i feel in this moment

not how do i feel
how should i feel

this is the lens through which my life is screened
acting as the world wants me to be
trying to make everyone happy
and somehow never for myself

Ticking, ticking, endless clicking
Time goes on, nothing sticking
Clunking, thunking, the wheel keeps spinning
Motion forward, circles beginning