I have a hole
Inside my chest
I try to fill it up.
With voice
With words
With love
With dodie tickets.

Nothing sticks.

Like glitter in the wound,
I bleed out.

I wonder how they do it
Those immaculate girls
With butterscotch hair and honeyed smiles
So sleek and streamlined,
So very contained
Gliding through life without a care,
They are the definition of grace.

My life is more haphazard
My room a bomb site of to do lists
My hair wild and frazzled
My shirt untucked
And my eyes bright-
Not good bright, though,
Not sweet sunlight bright,
Feverish, they dart with static-
My hands pirouette through the air
My teeth slightly crooked but smiling broadly
Dark circles under my eyes
And a liberal spray of spots on my face
Because who has time for face paint
When the mornings are reserved for catching up on the sleep you lost
Exploring the universe in your mind?

My words from my poems to my texts
Are long unending sentences
And stop-starts
Littered with exclamations!!
And I swear I'm articulate
This explosion you're hearing is vomited onto a page
A direct translation for a brain that flits and stumbles over itself
I beg of you to like me

My laughter bursts into your personal space
And I do too
I always get too close-
I come on too strong, apparently
I love too much, too hard and too fast
I fall far too easily and break my own heart
And drive people away
Because I'm not aloof or cool or distant
There's no thrill of the chase with me
Just honesty
And an eagerness to please.

I lurch between seeing these
As my most wonderful assets
And my greatest downfalls.
But *******
If you are one of the people who has made me believe the latter
Sure, I can be intense
Sure, I can be hard to love
But you have never known loyalty like mine.
Never will you find such passion and intensity
And that's a ******* good thing, you hear me?
That's a good thing.
I am vibrant and alive
Where you see cloudy days
I can find a kaleidoscope of colour
My energy comes not from coffee
But from this white-hot centre of my heart
This supernova colour-clashing burnout explosion of me.

And it's a ******* honour
To stand in my presence
And feel my warmth.

"I'd like to be a fly on the wall," you say.
Would you?
Would you really like to be privy to all
that drama and intrigue, without ever being noticed?
Sounds nice, I suppose.
But I'll let you in on a little secret-
That, my dears, is false advertising.
Truth is, people always notice flies
They just choose to ignore them
And lower their voices when you buzz by on sugar-spun wings of self-confidence-
Maybe it's just all in your head
Maybe you've misinterpreted things-behind kaleidoscope eyes
It always looks like there are more of them than you.

So you gain confidence
You hover on the fringes of their circle
And drone out a low hum of 'what've you been up to today?'
Or 'how're you?'
Or 'long day, huh?'
The response is offhand
A verbal flick of the wrist
Batting the ball back into your conversational court
Because coming at you with a fly swatter
Or a rolled up Cosmo magazine
Takes more effort than they're willing to give.

You buzz about some more
Hoping maybe the silence will entice them to engage
But no,
They can't hear your buzzing
Or they won't.
So instead you stand
Fly on the wall
Content with watching the light catch your wings
Repeatedly wringing your hands near your face
In a way they probably think is malevolent
I promise I'm not plotting-
I'm just juggling the weight of my loneliness
Maybe if I shift it from one palm to another
Somehow I will lighten the load.

Take comfort in this, little fly-
The sun makes your wings iridescent
And even though they'll never get close enough to see that, you can.
It's not a trick of the light
Your fractal eyes do not deceive you-
They are duplicate.

Faulty factory toys are fun to use, at first
Blue eyed girl with the white blonde curls
From dads side of the family
They coo at her
Before she learns to walk
And talk
And talk
And talk
When they built her in the baby factory
They must've forgot the little red button
The one that says
"Shut up for one single solitary ******* second and let someone else speak"
She doesn't pause to allow the other person the liberty to flit words through the air like songbirds
Instead hers land like pheasants
Shot in the skull
Trickling out opinions that were never asked for
With the brain fluid.

She's got a lot of them too
Opinions
And they're all right
She knows everything there is to know
At seventeen as well
What a prodigy, she thinks
What a nuisance, say the wise men
What a delusional idiot
What
A
Bore into her skull and all you'll see
Behind the kind eyes and philosophy
Is a witch
Entranced by the enchantment
Of her own voice
A selfish *******
Who buys her birthday presents at the last minute.

At least the parents got to have a test drive
A prototype
So they knew what to do right this time
Factor out whatever it was
The ingredients with the sell by date
That made this thing so near to right
But odd enough to be 'not quite'.
This time make one that's not lazy
That's not selfish
That doesn't want to be a ******* artist
That lets others speak
That can contribute and participate
Not sit on the sidelines
Heading for burnout
Heading for disaster-

Uncheck the box this time that says
Sordid mind
That says
Can't reply to texts
Even when friends are on the edge
of suicide, For ***** sake.
Tick the box that unveils the beauty of humanity
Fix it's eyes
Teach her to see these sacks of meat
The way others do
The way you're supposed to
Instead of like puzzles or pictures or packaging for a soul
Create a person not afraid
Of making mistakes
that can make her own decisions
This time make a mind
That can jump through the hoops
Society left behind
Fix her this time
Don't make another freak
On the fringes
Never quite fitting in

And the funny thing is
Even after this ******* perfect kid
Comes along and shows that blue eyed blonde-haired girl
Just how to do it
She's an old *****
No use teaching her new tricks
She'll shut out little miss pretty perfect project two point oh
She can't seem to help it
She thinks the best company in the world is her head
Her head?! Have you seen it
It's barbed wire and sunshine
It’s a rose choked by thorns
Do not touch her-
She will make you bleed.