i feel so trapped by everyone else's thoughts about me i can't stop caring and changing myself to fit the their best preferred version of me and i can feel myself dying and twisting trying to be the person they all separately think i should be. mutually exclusive realities living in the heads of people better than me who try to force their opinions and truths upon me ruthless and regardless of how far i have to bend to be satisfying. i feel shriveled and scared and unsure of how to proceed if at all. is it feasible to leave? is it possible to abandon the only things i see guiding me? i have always hated control and now i can see it lives inside of me. even now, thinking about how you will respond, how everyone will see me. you, talking to you thinking 'there is a easy solution to this' THERE IS NEVER AN EASY WAY OUT for me. i easily identify my own character flaws please refrain from pointing them out for me.

esi tilted her head, smiling this strange, did-you-actually-just-ask-me-that smile. she leaned forward across the table and whispered, “why would i ever want to fall in love?”

curse like a ******* sailor,
wear a bikini,
move to Europe,
get at least 2 tattoos,
pierce myself a few more times,
learn three new languages (just so i can curse three more ways)
buy a bird,
live in NYC,
kiss someone i don't love,
kiss someone who doesn't love me,
love myself & my mistakes,
have empathy for my past self,
and hope for the future
(where i hopefully own a snake)

i am worn books and french vocabulary, ice cold chai and steaming earl grey. i am stone stares and eyes watering, uncertainty in silence and sharp decisive conversation. i am shaking hands and reciting poetry during anxiety attacks and i am indie rock showers and top-of-your-lungs pop radio in the car. i am empathy without sympathy, crying in the bathroom stall and i am childhood cartoons and your favorite stuffed animal and the beach in the summer. i am desperate to be alone and desperate to scream and desperate to find someone who knows what i mean and still likes me. i am comfort zone constellations, Orion's belt on every nighttime stroll, i am the hollow tree in the backyard of the house we don't own and i am my handwriting and the words in my poems. i am everything you have made me out to be and i hate that; hate that you see all my flaws so clearly but that isn't all of me and i know that now.

i am the trinkets my grandmother left me and her eyes when she looked at me and the way she cried when she read my poetry. i am a thousand ways i have loved those dear to me and the children who fall asleep on me and the way my cat runs to me and i don't need your or anyone's approval but God's and my own. thanks anyway.

Ne verse aucune larme—Verse aucune larme !
La fleur fleurira une autre année.
Ne pleure pas—O ne pleure pas !
Les jeunes fleurs dorment dans la terre.
Sèches tes yeux—O sèches tes yeux
Parce que j'ai appris au Paradis
Guéris mon coeur de mélodies—
Ne pleure pas.

he steps closer now, and i can feel his breath on my neck. maddening. “what are you trying to do,” i whirl on him, fingernails digging into my palms and my heartbeat pounding in my head. “drive me insane?”

the dark-eyed girl, audessa, laughs. her laugh sounds like red velvet or crystal champagne glasses and it’s magnetic. even nikolai seems enraptured by her, and he is never impressed with anyone. envy rises in my throat.