sometimes when i talk words just come out and i laugh because when i write stream of consciousness it just sounds like a fever dream
and then i see the flickering in the corner of my eye and then i hear my name
not the one i want to hear
the other one
and nobody said it and everyones still
and this isnt poetry the way the ones i love write poetry
they put words together in a way that sounds good and makes you feel
i put words together so i can understand them myself
i want people to read my poems because i want to be understood
but everything just leaves me in the dirt
i dont want to see it
i dont want to see it anymore

i want to cry because i cant help you
but i cant cry because i dont want to make it worse

sometimes i worry because i am nothing
i am nothing at all
agender and aromantic and asexual and sometimes i feel almost ahuman
but then i remember that some of the most beautiful things are nothing
the space and the night and what i like to hear is in the bad part of your mind
sometimes you dont have to be anything at all

names are really important to me.

i like saying your names.

your names are important to my and my name is important to me and when you say my name i feel important.

i say your names out loud when i think of them because maybe you will hear me and you will come back.

you all might hear me, then.

Well the thing is
I don't know how

She holds my hand tight
Like she's afraid I'll fly away

How do you tell someone that they’re not real
Politely?
Quietly?
I don’t know what to do anymore
What if none of this really matters
What if we’re all going to be okay
Because I’m not real
And you’re not real
But how do you say that because we aren’t actually human
We’re just pretending
Because life is about the things that we don’t understand
We don’t see
But why can’t anyone tell me how to tell them I don’t experience
What I’m supposed to because
I’m not real
And you’re not real
And reality is just an illusion because we don’t really exist
And humans are just a concept
And life is just a fleeting idea in the mind of something we can’t even begin to understand
Because we’re not real
I’m not real
I don’t understand and I can’t see with all this dust around me
Dust kicked up by the thousands of feet
All copies of the same feet marching
Oh god we’re not real we all have the same feet look at your feet
How do I say this because we aren’t real so we can’t listen and we can’t hear
Is it polite to tell someone that their entire life is false?
Can it be done quietly?
We’re all going to be okay I swear to god
Because in a thousand other places we don’t exist
And in two thousand more we are okay already
So the odds say that we’re likely to be okay here
Because we’re already okay somewhere
I swear to god
But in the long run it probably doesn't matter anyway because there is no long run
Because I’m not real
I’m not real and I can’t see oh god there’s so much dust
All I can hear is the marching
I’m not real
I’m a thought in a bubble in a cloud in the dirt
I can’t be real because they told me reality wasn’t like this
But then when I hear you speak
Why do I hear humanity’s voice
When I read those words
Your words
Why can I feel the idea creeping politely
quietly
Into my mind that I might be a real person
Because this isn’t supposed to happen
Oh god, not to just a thought
Not to a mere figment
My feet are itchy
This isn’t supposed to happen
Not to a lie
Not to a lie like me

I exhale
As I watch the blood slowly mix in with the bathwater
You deserve this
In the winter everyone wears long sleeves

The first girl I liked
Liked the Black Eyed Peas more
And she would sing
As she skipped circles around me in the schoolyard
My mom always told me she would grow up to be a lesbian
I wished she was right
The second girl I liked
Had a Hello Kitty tracksuit
And I still worried
About what to wear around her
I told her her religious waterbottle was tacky
And I know we’ve both cried over that
The third girl I liked
Sailed on a pirate ship
And sometimes we would laugh about it
But sometimes we wouldn’t
I liked the way her eyes looked when she laughed
I still do
The fourth girl I liked
Was the third girl I liked
I liked her for a long time
And sometimes we would laugh about it
but sometimes we wouldn’t
My mom always told me she would grow up to be a lesbian
I wished she was right
The fifth time I liked someone
For the first time I liked someone
They turned out not to be a girl
but it was okay because I turned out not to be a girl either
I would never call a religion tacky now
The sixth time I liked someone
The fifth girl I liked
She wore a crown of fire everyday
Something someone else might call hair
We didn’t last long because she came to realize that for her
I needed to be a girl too