what do you write
when you have no idea
what exactly it is you feel
but anxiety and nerves
and inadequacy.

My life has been spent
wondering if the way
I feel is actually okay
or if i'm just entirely delusional.

All I ever need is some effort
and affirmation
but it seems that
it must be too hard for people
so as I sit alone
no one to confide in
I wonder why I'm always
second best to those I put first.

Sorry for sounding redundant
but it seems everything I write
somehow sounds exactly the same.
So maybe, for the sake
of deja vu
I should just quite this too.

Not many things make me happy anymore
not even the curve of your lips
when you smile
because what good is all of that
if you don't even plan time
for me in your busy schedule.

I am a victim of my own self pity
and I have felt sorry for myself all my life.
But I'm sorry, I don't know how to change me.
I wish I could.
Goodnight.

You were the first boy to buy me flowers and they weren't roses like all the other girls get. They were the colorful, cheaper ones and I liked that. That was the first time I realized that you knew me, a little better than I knew myself. I was terrified of you. Not in the way that I thought you would bring me harm but in the way that I knew you would make me happy and I didn't think that's what I deserved. I made you sad because I knew I couldn't ever be happy, but then you found love so I guess it's okay. I'm still trying to decide if I am finally happy because I'm not sure exactly what it feels like. I cry a lot, I guess I always have except when the alcohol masked the pain. But I didn't want to go down that road and now every time that sip hits my intestines I get sick. I guess it's for the best, isn't it? We were always meant to be friends, because it's simple. And this love in my life now never is. Maybe I was meant to be who I am now, in order to grow from who I was because I've never really liked myself. I'm not sure that part of me will ever go away. I guess being a friend is the only thing I don't **** at these days. I hope that part of me will always stay.

the snakes have always infiltrated my life,
whether slowly or in masses
they've been consistent.
depriving oxygen to certain limbs
so I could not walk or crawl to safety.
some days they get just close enough
to swallowing me whole
that I can still smell
the metallic on their tongues.
I've tried to fight but too small
tried to scream but too quiet
tried to do something
but felt too nothing.

and sometimes
you become the thing you have feared-
I am starting to taste the metallic in my own mouth now
staring to think of ways I can feed off their oxygen
starting to deconstruct everything I've known about forgiveness
it doesn't serve me in this instance.
What good is being quiet and agreeable?
I still get eaten alive every time.

It's always just enough to fill them up
but not enough to leave me for dead
they still need me far too much
an ego bigger than their stomach.

They should've predicted
I'd be carrying all these resentments-
built up like muscle along my spine
metal encasing my knuckles
but how could they?
survival they only know because of me
they don't know what it's like to be bled dry
by someone who's skin you share.

how could they?
that would require paying attention.
and I have done enough of that
to build lifetimes with just the surface.
They could not even recall
the color my limb turns when they feed off it.

they will learn not to bite the body that has carried them,
as I shed the skin we share.

I see the earth burning around me
in the most literal sense.
Bombs of foreign wars
we are complacent inside
heating the earth.

There is ice in Texas
there are children
and mothers
and doctors
and lawyers
and people
turned to rubble and ash,
we are complicit in their pain.

We have only two different
monopolies to choose from
and I am wondering
how to crawl out of my skin
or maybe move to Iceland.

How do you swallow this type of pain?
the kind where you are too far away?
The kind that twists your insides
and provokes a unique kind of helplessness.

I used to let my wrists run red
just to come back to my body
and now here I sit
wanting to save the world.
wanting to take away pain
I so easily caused myself.

how does helpless feel this heavy?
like the weight of the world is
resting on my psyche alone.

the united states of disarray
dysregulation and disempowerment.

this never really felt like home
but now more than ever
I am stuck settled in a reality
someone else put me in.

my nervous system is teetering
between defeat and reaction
between the joker and batman
between benzos and stimulants.
trying to course correct
a dejected conglomerate.

this can't all be for nothing,
so instead of giving up I keep fighting
for those who don't have the agency
for those who don't have autonomy.

rummaging through coping tactics
like they're a closet full of clothes,
writing is the closest thing to closure I'll ever know.

I used to think I felt things
but thinking about why I feel things
isn't the same as feeling them.

I used to think I knew
the ebbs and flows of my mental state
but turns out I was separating myself from my body.

This body is an island on it's own.
Disconnecting itself from my spinal column.
I have learned the art of detachment.
Going away whenever I don't want to feel a thing
and when I do, feel it all, it consumes me.

How can I live with this childlike sadness
sifting inside of me, just waiting for a
crack in my smile to seep through?
How can I live with this emptiness I carry
until I realize it was never emptiness at all-
instead it was just hidden away
in a deep pocket of my brain
waiting until the moments I discovered it.
Like a hidden treasure chest
I didn't realize I had been looking for
over the course of 29 years.

I am so close to 30 and so
far away from any semblance of adulthood
this body she is still 9 years old
begging for the attention she sought
but never got.
Screaming into pillows at night
wishing someone would really see her-
but they never even heard her muffled screams.

Between the low blows
and the secrets below-
they never knew I needed to be seen
they never knew what they didn't see.

a body full of secrets seeping at the seems
until I come undone over and over again.