We’re in a young-love recession.
Gen Zers are slow to trust and averse to risk,
we have, it seems, a particular social nervousness
about interpersonal exchanges and the symbiosis of love.

So we resort to situationships (undefined relationships),
a stratagem for closeness, with zero commitment.

You can flirt; you can kiss; you can dance.
You can have a crush so big it blots out the stars
You can have transformative romantic encounters
you can care deeply and get hurt badly
you can, in fact, be absolutely wrecked by love
All without ever being in a relationship.

Thank God we’re only young once.
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Songs for this:
Die With A Smile by Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars
Busy Woman by Sabrina Carpenter

A moth ate my clothes
But I didn't really mind
'Cause he said he was a butterfly

Blood-dark days and lilies in bloom,
the knife, the gun, the operatic end—
all goodfellas and grandfathers,
all godfathers and millionaires
at yet another Sicilian funeral.

I was young and arrogant,
I dared to walk behind a Mafia boss.
I could have taken the long way
around the circle of captains he sat among,
but I didn’t—he felt my presence.    
He turned, slow, deliberate.
The look he cast my way
haunts me to this very day.

It was as if the dead man’s eyes
opened in the boss’s stare,
and I was staring at a cold, dead soul,
staring back at me,
and at another funeral—my own.

To be a piece of paper
Thrown at sea,
Crumpled—furiously
Unable to be.

To row against
Undaunted waves,
Tall as mountains,
Jagged as nails.

Oh, to wish
To greet the sand,
Just to meet
Some reader's hands.

It feels like all I do is work and go home
Like I exist only to act like a stone
No love or conviction is needed by me
But all that I want is to be free
Like a bird I long to be up in the clouds
High in the sky and away from the crowds
But while my two feet are planted on land
The meaning of life seems instead bland