If you demand from my weary atoms
That which I would have otherwise freely given
You'll find it's not offered willingly again
Call it repulsion
Revulsion
Outright rebellion
But I've lived all my life in fear
And I will fall underfoot
No more

After you'd wielded all your spite like a cudgel
After I'd choked on my pleas
After your torrent of venom doused the last spark I had
The concept of future was moot

Today
And tomorrow
And the day after
You will scorn me for having banked fires
Ignoring the trail of ruined umbrellas
Rewriting the narrative to say you were there
Holding a match

I have always said I have little time for
Thought experiments
The tedium of philosophy
Is of no use for me
Because here on Earth
We know that Sisyphus was miserable

I have always been shoving boulders up mountains
Seeing no other way than the hardest one
A task that requires exacting attention
Precision
Perfection
But mortal bodies can only take so much
Sudden collapse should not have seemed so
Sudden

I have always been foolish and deluded
Plagued by dangerous thinking thinking thinking
A dissonant orchestra that never tires
Ever conjuring phantasms
Fears and fantasies at war
A sparkling utopia in the clouds
And then the reminder that I am
Earthbound

I have spent the better part of my life
Feeling like feelings are going to tear me
To pieces
The programming of my brain has
The gain set
Way too high so
Everything
Is an assault on the neurons that
Can't fire fast enough
Too bright
Too loud
Too sad
Too angry
Too tired

Too much

I collapsed inward

Soldiering on for the sake of
Appearances
I can feel the restlessness rending
My ribcage in half
So I'm pleading with whoever will
Listen
To make it stop
Please
Make
It
Stop
The anxious pacing of my neurons
The fervor of my frantic mind
The scrambling
Scrabbling
Scared
Lizard brain
Stuck in a loop
Fight, flight, freeze
Fight, flight, freeze
Fight
Flight
Freeze

Fight

When a lifetime of living by others' rules
Saw me not choose myself
While my head was screaming and railing against it
I just...fell out of my life
The riptide of pleasing everyone
Dragged me along
And I smiled even as I was drowning.

Nothing could have saved me by then
The yoke of expectation was too heavy
I was always going to tire of thrashing
And sink

It seemed like a story
For Schrödinger
Time and distance ensured that
They were
All things and
Nothing
At once
And, in this way, they stayed in perpetual orbit
She wondered if
In another life
     In another place
          Time
               Universe
Their lives would have intersected
Instead of diverging
     Unrequited
To haunt her with all that could have been

It was the bitterest irony
When at last their paths swerved together
That both hearts had already been spoken for
Somewhere
     The Fates were surely cackling
          As the air hung heavy
               With all the possibilities
                    That died on the vine
Because time was never on their side

How could one even cry for something they’d never had?
She found herself heaving uncontrolled sobs
Shaking with unfettered grief
In mourning
     For all the things
          She had wanted to live
All the bright dreams of their teenage years
That had seemed so perfect
Shattered by the bitterness of
Growing up
And that old ******* Father Time

If she were honest with herself
She’d admit it was not him
She actually loved all these years
But all the things he might have been
—or rather—
All the things she might have been with him
What a different life she might have had if
     One day
          She had followed her
               Wild teenage love
Instead of living in this cosmic joke

She’ll never know
But she’ll heave sobs
For all the parallel lives she is not living
And the orbit she will return to
Knowing she’ll never be satisfied
     She’ll always wonder
          Always be gazing off
               Trying to glimpse a galaxy
Where things turned out better

It felt like the day was made for vengeful gods
The same tired face
On every windblown pedestrian with their umbrella flipped
Inside out
Belying the drudgery of existence that morning
And I felt like it was only a matter of time
Before the city drowned me

For the millionth time in my life
I had the realization that I spend my time
Peering into people’s faces
Wondering what they’re feeling
Which wouldn’t be so bad if anyone had spared me a second glance
The feeling of being both too much and never enough
Had pulled at all my loose ends
Until I finally flipped inside out in a downpour
All the tiny hinges holding me together
Snapping in defeat
As I came to terms with the fact that
No one
Was going to try to keep me out of the wind

I was made for vengeful gods
Built for crashing through storms
Because mortals left me with nothing but heartache
None of them has the eyes to see
How I pulled myself to pieces to shield them from hurricanes
I would light myself on fire
Just to take the chill out of their bones
And when I have nothing left
I’ll be the neutron star or the black hole or the spent piece of space junk
That everyone forgot to see while it could still shine