Abortion access and rights are being slashed and women’s voices silenced by forced pregnancy and poverty..
So when I got my period this month I felt the need to celebrate.
I don’t have to grow a life to participate in an existence I myself can’t justify.
I won’t have to raise a daughter as an incubator for a state of lies.

I want to live my life effortfully.
I want to expend my energy while I have it and chase things that are meaningful if only to anyone but myself.
I want to feel in my bones that I am god. My own personal god. The voice I hear in my head, I want to know without a doubt her power.

I don’t really understand god,
But the god everyone speaks of must be biology and exist somewhere in the cycle of all life—
in birth and death, joy and suffering.
Everything inevitable and unpredictable.

I'm scared that 'becoming' who I am is just an acceptance of realities others have created. Maybe the older we get the more entrenched we become in what we perceive to be the truth; the more we experience of our tiny existence, the more we believe in it.
"The way of life we live, a life we have never really chosen, forces us to walk past what we see."

We’re all afflicted with the same blindness,
grabbing at objects in the dark,
Fighting because we don’t know better

Within a moment I understand the universe— and then it is gone.

If you wonder about truth you realize a singular thing doesn’t have one truth but many, from many different angles reflected in a million mirrors.

The only thing I will say about absolute-lies is that you must be absolutely willing to give up what you believe absolutely.

Life is a cycle with a lot of revolving bits and pieces that are always changing in a million different ways; separating and joining. But it’s all a cycle and everything is made of the same stuff with the same energy in life and death.

What if I don’t have any answers?
What if I don’t ever know anything that’s true?
Does that bug you like it bugs me too?

Why am I so tired? My spirit is so low and dies with the trees and I feel the disease of human kind. Not so kind. Staring into the fate of the blind. We’re all so blind. So blind.so blind.

Life is a cycle with a lot of revolving bits and pieces that are always changing in a million different ways, separating and joining. But it’s all a cycle and everything is made of the same stuff with the same energy in life and death.

If a virus kept its host alive it too could live.
But greed is more powerful.
Maybe we’re the same.

Sometimes I wish I could disappear
They never guessed this would rip me in half,
This is ripping me in half.
But it’s fine,
It’s just fine.
I can’t get high anymore,
I can’t get high because I need more and more and more and it’s never enough. It’s never enough to forget.
It’s never enough to forgive.
I can taste metal in my dreams—
this is all the life I’ll ever need.

He doesn’t talk much about where he came from;
maybe he’s scared the truth of the place would speak more than he could.
Maybe it’s hard to explain the hunger or the times the power goes off or the constant fear to someone who’s flown above it all.
Though we don’t talk about the sand or the fruit on the trees or what the rain feels like at the end of the day either.
We’ve lived moment to moment and learned what we know of each other through the present.
Somehow I yearn for this place I’ve gathered pieces of. The place I cannot know but that grew inside me.

Don’t trust anything around you.
Everything is a lie.
Can’t even trust my own thoughts or your thoughts or what you say but I’ll consider it all.
We’re a consideration generation with no truth.

I remember the stillness of that night;
and the silence we felt because nature doesn’t really count as sound.
I remember the cat-tails we’d dip in kerosene
and watch the glean of the light that rode the coat tails of summer into fall.
I hear a clock deep inside me that counts the seasons I’ve watched; tic tock tic tock
Someday this is going to stop.
It threatens to stop.

I had a dream I killed you.
Cold blooded blood on my hands.
Heat swells and expands,
The space I held for patience was small to begin with,
And in my dreams it explodes.
I watch everything explode.
The only thing I feel is relief; love was a myth and I’m tired of the grief.

I create more problems so I have something to solve.
I’m the master of my own destruction and my own purpose.
I’m not sure I know what would happen if I stopped—
Who would we be?

I'm learning about life in a bubble.
I'm learning to use words but not speak.
So when I talk it sounds rehearsed or fake,
Until I don't even know who I am or how I arrived here;
but I look and dress and act like all the figures around me.
Am I part of this?
Is this really who I’ve decided to be?

Medicate a generation,
So no one wakes up or asks any questions;
I'll take the pills because the truth doesn't make this worth living,
and I'll take the drugs because I'm tired of living a lie.

Globally, the number one killer of children is diarrhea.
Usually, this can be prevented by drugs that cost fifty cents.
But I needed that new car,
I deserve designer jeans,
I have to look good this season,
Because life means nothing compared to things.

Sometimes I want to float out my bedroom window;
Past the unkept yellow bungalow,
Past the fir trees and the winter carcasses of rose bushes,
Past all the street lamps and their glow.
It's time to go.
I feel tired and torn and the soles of my shoes are worn.

When I'm high it's not that I'm less sad-- I just feel the sadness in a different way... and somehow that helps.

These last few months left a bad taste in my mouth;
The bad taste of dagger flavoured alcohol,
Of too much ****, cough syrup and coke.

This month left me empty and broke,
I want to choke out the truth to you but some things are too painful to speak--

I never imagined something so painful wouldn't bleed.

This was the fourth time I'd heard the crack of death;
In my experience, when someone dies you can hear this pop or crack sound.
This was the fourth time I heard the pop of death, life escaping from a body.
But this time it was different because that crack came from inside me;
It was the snap that severed me from the universe.

I've got a list of things I have to pay and a list of people I owe and favours I'll never be able to repay.
I can't feel love or happiness or pain I just watch everything happening and it's so tragic because amidst our progress  nothing has ever really changed.

My dad is so proud because I'm going to university,
My mom sees hope,
And my sister looks up to me.

I'll become a doctor,
and my mom will tell her friends,
I'll have kids and a husband and take antidepressants.

I want to die so bad sometimes but I'll never take that leap.
My life is a promise to them I've still got to keep.

This is the kind of happiness that comes in waves.
Water fills coves and beach shores but just as quickly as the waves were given, they're taken away.
The tide is at its peak and I prepare myself for the emptiness I'm going to feel when it leaves.

I can feel the chemicals ***** under my skin,
I can feel the sunshine pouring in.
Another day another dollar,
another distraction to silence the callers;
All those people who want to know where I've been, or all those who genuinely ask how I've been.
I've avoided these truths at all cost,
If I never look back I'll never have to face what I lost.

The truth will never set you free.
It doesn't even exist-- it's just based on each person's own view of reality.
So instead of the truth I search for love.
It was the only thing that ever made any sense to me.

Don't leave me alone with my thoughts,
they're eating me, tormenting me, they're at the centre of every battle I've fought.
Don't leave me alone with my family,
they're living out their dreams through me and I'm so scared to let them down.
Don't leave me alone, don't let me go, don't let me drown.

You like me better when I'm high,
I like you best when you lie;
I guess that's why we're friends.

I crave a different state of mind,
Make me more honest, make me connect with people make me more open, smart and kind.

I don't crave the come down,
Make me feel tired, make me sleep but have bad dreams, make me feel distant, make my body ache and head pound.

So when the money comes around like it always does I'm constantly torn between up and down, a battle of is, isn't and was.

I'm the thief of your dreams; I've gone and turned them all black.
Everything you wanted for me, everything you hoped I'd be I threw back.
Now you worry and smother me with all of your good intentions,
But I lie to you through my teeth-- even my "truths" are inventions.

I'm screaming,
But my voice is trapped in glass jars you've saved on the kitchen shelf of our small country house,
and you listen only when I'm gone,
and only when you miss me,
Because I'm better seen and not heard,
Who wants the truth when the face that tells you it is pretty?
Distraction is better than facing reality.

I tried to tell the truth but they smothered me,
No one wants the truth-- no one wants that responsibility.

The summer sky was slashed across our backdrop,
and the bleeding sun beginning to fade,
we counted out the hours, minutes and the seconds,
wishing all the moments we lost could've stayed.
And in that moment I loved you,
I loved you so sure and deep,
and in our temporary lives, on this temporary earth, this temporary moment made it all seem...
worth it.

Over and over like an endless love story we are pulled back together.
No matter where we go,
No matter all we've done,
You are the fibres of my existence-- and I will always come back to you.

"But you're pretty"--
As
If
I
Only
Exist
To
Be
Aesthetically
Pleasing
To
You--
I am pretty,
So why am I empty?

We are all falling into chaos;
our houses of cards are crashing.
If we could zoom out time like you can a camera lens,
we could see the spectrum for what it is and maybe we could truly witness universal entropy increasing-- it's always increasing.
We would be witnesses to the truth of dust, the truth of chaos.
We could be seers of time and space and float above everything, escaped from the race.
Instead I can only witness my small blip of time from own my small perspective.
I will watch politicians and global warming and the world run around in circles and I will call this chaos.

It covers me in blankets,
and silences me like the morning after a snow storm,
here the world is muted, dampened, softened under its weight.
The noises start again when we dig ourselves out.
She doesn't dig herself out,
she sits at her window and watches the figures below,
she's been buried for so long what's a few more days?

"You're not alone"
Am I supposed to take comfort in that?
I want to be isolated in my suffering.
I do not wish this on another.

There is evidence of gravity here,
it pushed me, against earth and ground and concrete.
I am living,
I am free,
within confines of society.
There is a blank space in my head of deep secrets,
darkest when I think of them;
beautiful.
I ****** him for money.
I'm a *****.
I am temporary.
I do not exist.
I'm wet when he ***** me.
That must mean I like it.
I zone out, I ******* like it. Give it to me. I'm ******* dripping wet.
Use me. Use me. Use me.
I'm psychotic.
I have images in my head, I am divine, I am God, I am empty, so empty.
I will **** myself.
Not because I'm sad, but because everyone who knows me knows I don't belong here.
I make a better memory than friend.

What is a eulogy?
A confession of memory--
An avoidance of the singular truth.
I'm whispering to ghosts with no ears like they do on Sundays, in stuffy confession booths.
Eulogies are for the living,
The ones he left behind--
For his mother and father and two older brothers,
and truths to answers that they'll never find.
Eulogies are for the living but he's taken me with him.

My aunt is a journalist on TV,
She conveys messages to millions of people.
She's been to Afghanistan and around the world;
Providing a voice to those with none.
She is successful, intelligent, kind.

My grandma and I sit down to watch her show this afternoon--
My grandma wants to know what my aunt is wearing,
She tells me "she looks fat"
I say nothing.
Because we're women.
How many people ignored her message about the Syrian refugees? How many people thought about her hair or her body instead?

I tried to reach out to someone about depression.
About how I want to die.
He talked about his life--
Then we had ***.

At your death I was a ghost,
lying next to your body, I tried not to choke.
The suffocation of words I didn't say left me tired and broke.
I wanted to lay in the morgue and
f
  a
    l
      l
asleep with you there,
next to your blue glass eyes and brown curly hair.

The parting gift you left for me-- a dialogue in my head,
your ghost screams at me at night, I’m never alone in my bed.
A chorus of morphine alarms and IV drips silence me; and they sing my songs for you instead.

I remember when the chemo failed,
your family asked the doctors "isn't there something you can do?"
they turned to me, like I was guilty,
and said "no, you're wrong, this can't be true".
"palliative care" "hospice" "comfortable" euphemisms fell from my mouth,
they tasted bitter like acid and lies--
I wanted to scream and cry and tear my heart out.

At night I lay in an empty bed,
and when I sleep I dream,
I wake up next to a body bag,
my mouth too terrified to scream.

On the fourth floor of the brick wall barricade,
We stood at the window watching the rain,
I felt calm watching water drop suicide;
I thought how it'd be nice to die by your side.
My mind breached every professional boundary,
but my mouth remained closed,
looking back it was obvious-- they should've let me go.

I stayed with you on the worst days,
when you couldn't pick your head up from the bed.
Instead of encouraging movement and intervention,
I just sat there, right or wrong, and tried to follow what you said.

I work in a hospital,
sterile, too bright, monitors beep,
everything's bleak except you.
I know you're dying and as I check your vital signs I try not to speak.
You tell me once you're better you'll take me to dinner,
I wish I was optimistic, I wish I didn't know better.
So instead I take my breaks in your room,
we sit there and talk over ****** hospital food.
When I work night shifts I watch your mother cry while you sleep,
It's eight o-clock, she hasn't had dinner, I remind her to eat.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world"...
But I was born upside down
and instead I am all the things I know I need to change,
but don't.