i gave away my last pack of cigarettes but i should have saved them for emergency nights when the vape just isn't cutting it and feeling 23 sinks in with baggy eyes.
my stomach is so full, i have a headache and this incessant whining makes me want to scratch at my skin until it peels off.
earlier this evening (back when it was evening and not 4am) there was a spider crawling in my bed
and i yelled for my brother, who luckily liked me enough in the moment to come in and pick up the daddy long leg and take it outside.
I wonder, at 23, how i would live by myself.
i wonder if i'll feel closer to my parents once i move out
i wonder if i'll ever feel satisfied with my existence - but isn't that a bad thing? doesn't that mean giving up? is success a failure in this way..
when does the achievement of a dream leave you dreamless

Heat bears down on
seemingly sponge like pavement
and sings of scorching summer sun.

It is times like these
I am usually in my prime.
Usually so excited to go out
and live my best life.  

But lately, there is only
an overabundance of scared:
of everything and nothing, all at once.

Maybe we haven't gotten
the medications quite right,
or maybe I haven't
perfected my grounding mantra
but I don't quite see an end in sight.

The voices are deafening
it's starting to keep me up at night.

It's funny, because
in my youth, I had an infatuation
with swingsets, but yet
this back and forth of
upward swings and downward spirals
is getting tiresome:

it feels like I'm losing the fight.

I used to view existential
as a meaningless concept
rendered complex when used
in sentences by the pretentious
until I came to realize that it’s
simply nothing but the shadow
of a black dog sitting on a dock
by an old man holding a rusty
old revolver to his head on dark
nights of deep water thinking
man, what a waste of a good
bullet if you pull it, so throw it
in and let me fetch it once again
just like the last time, and the time
before that, or like every time you
have a notion that the ocean is blue
only for you and your sorrow, dude
let it go and let’s go home before
tomorrow comes, for your shadow
is aware and cares for your existence.