What is the meaning of life?
Is it to be remembered?
To have people tell stories of you after you are gone?
Is it to change the world?
To make an impact in the blink of existence allotted to us?
To create something that will last?
Last until everybody you knew or who knew you is dead?

Humans are obsessed with finding a meaning.
A goal.
To matter.
We are born onto an assembly line that is
go, go, go, go, go
and then it ends.
What is left?

We never take time to think about how beautiful it is just to exist.
How, for this moment to be happening, the universe had to be created.
And through an incomprehensible sequence of events you ended up here.
In this moment.
This is a miracle.
There is no need to force yourself to matter, you already do.
You are the product of billions and billions of years of work.
Cherish it.

For the words flow so much easier when you aren't trying to force them,
when you simply sit and watch the sunset and listen to the birds.

What is the meaning of life but to exist?

Society forces us into boxes
PLEASE CHECK ONE EACH:
[ ] Male                  [ ] Female
[ ] Straight             [ ] Gay
[ ] Child                 [ ] Adult
[ ] Black                 [ ] White

Check
Check
Check
Check

My existence cannot be simplified into your boxes
I am more than society's simplistic ideas
I am more than the sum of your boxes

I hate you when you catcall her
I feel the anger rise, tightly coiled in my stomach
Clench my fists and feel my blood pound,
Because I know what you do to her,
Reducing her to her body, just for your pleasure.
To you she is only a body, just another opportunity to prove
your manliness, your superiority.
Just another girl to humiliate.
I know this and my rage roars, a dragon, untamable
ready to tear into you the second you try it with me.

But then as I walk pass, the voices are silent.
No calls, no whistles,
I don't exist.
The dragon within me becomes confused,
am I really so ugly, so unwanted, so plain,
that the **** on the streets, the ******* who harass girls as they walk,
won't even look at me?
What's wrong with me?
The dragon fades and a new type of hate arises.
I hate myself, my stupid hair, my ******* up jaw, my plain appearance.
I should feel lucky for the blessed silence, the peaceful walk,
but instead I feel a nauseating sense of shame and hate for myself,
As I tuck my head down like a good girl and hurry home,
Trying not to cry.

Society has turned being harassed as a goal to reach for.
Keep telling us "it's a compliment"
And sooner or later we'll start to believe it.
But that doesn't make it true.

So I sit sharping my nails, not sure whose throat to rip out,
Yours? Or mine?
Because you've told me,
It's not ladylike for me to hate anyone,
Except myself.

Why did you do it?

You must have felt the hot drips of wax on your back,
known that your flight would soon be over.
So why did you stay up so high?

Did you know you'd become a warning?
A moral?
Was the height so exhilarating you forgot yourself?
Caught up in youthful idiocy like they say?

Or was it the first time you truly felt Apollo's rays?
Felt the light shining on your wings?
Did you fall in love with the sun?
And the sweet burn of melting wax and falling feathers?
I know I did.

Did you know it would soon be over?
Did you still climb higher?
Try to get a little bit closer?
Even as it burned?

Daedalus was just jealous you could fly higher than he ever dared to.
Jealous of your youth. Your freedom.
Cause you loved ever minute of it.

Icarus, did you know you were going to fall?
Decided it was worth it?
Your precious moments of freedom worth every terrified moment of descent
Because those breathes in the sun were the most beautiful ones you'd ever take.
Kids like us know: the best high is the one followed by the fall.

Icarus, they wanted you to be a lesson,
But I never saw you as anything but an inspiration

Cry as often as you want
Cry loud and obvious
Cry quietly and privately
Because even if your tears can accomplish nothing
At least they are no longer inside of you
Threatening the life of you
Don't be afraid to have emotions
It is what makes us human

The girl with the coy smile
The boy with the brown eyes
The girl next door
The boy who believed in the universe

She loved them so much,
gave them everything
But left nothing for herself

I swallowed you and
though about swallowing the gun

I licked the taste of you off my lips and
thought about licking off the rest of the chemicals

You're hands wrapped around my throat and
I wished they were a rope

I left scratches on your back and
thought about scratching my veins open

We kissed in the pool and
I imagined sinking to the bottom

Loving you was just a distraction from hating myself

You asked me what I wanted.
You asked it metaphorically:
what do I want out of life?
But god, at that moment all I wanted was you

Not just the boy who thought to ask but all four of them.
I want nothing more than to be curled up on the couch.
Watching some ****** comedy,
laughing and making fun of it.

I want to be able to lean over and kiss her lips mid laugh
I want to run my fingers through his hair
I want to pull her close
I want to hold his hand

But most of all I want none of this to feel out of place.
For this to be a regular Friday movie night.
Laughing together, finally.

"please please please please please"
Even I don't know if I beg for death or for life

We learned about the three types of love in class today,
and all I could think about was you.

My teacher said eros was ****** desire
and all I could think about was the taste of your lips and how they felt on my skin.
But Plato defined eros as the love of beauty in a person
and my thoughts turned to how the sunlight loves to play on your face.

Philia is the love between friends, my teacher said
and I thought back to snow fights and shared laughter.
Aristotle said philia comes from the best people,
It makes sense that everyone loves you.

The selfless love: agape
The perfect mix of the other two:
a passion and a fondness,
spontaneous and comfortable.
Agape is often described as the love between God and humans.

And gods did I worship you
and gods I didn't deserve you
but gods I think for a moment you loved me too

Assignment: Reflect on this quote*
"He in his madness prays for storms and dreams that storms will bring him peace" -Leo Tolstoy*

Sometimes all we want is something to destroy us.
To dash us to pieces upon the rocks,
until we lay scattered,
like a macabre game of 52 pickup.
Because it's easier to start over from scratch then to stretch one more butterfly bandage.
When you've done so many repairs and patch-ups that you are less person and more stitches,
it makes more sense to break,
so you can gather up the fragments and fashion them into something new.
Cause maybe your next self will be less fragile than the last.

So we fall in love with the dangerous things:
Storms and people,
and everything in between.
Not because we think we're invincible,
because we are waiting for the thing that will destroy us properly for once.

Rinse and Repeat.

One day I will return to the dust of the Universe.
But first?

*Let me shine.

His liver, My heart
The true torture is not in the breaking,
But in the knowledge that you will become whole again,
Only to feel them rip your organs out again.
He stole fire
I loved the wrong people in the wrong way
Neither of us deserves our punishments
But we can't bring ourselves to regret our crimes

This one's for the forgotten gods,
for the gods whose names have faded from memory,
lost to time.
Starved from lack of devotion
You deserved better

This one's for the changed gods,
for the gods who have been made a mockery of,
reduced to comic book characters.
Living on scraps of prayers.
You will be great again

This one's for the new gods,
for the highways, TVs, casinos.
And of course the Father.
Growing fat on belief.
*You too will fade

Why do they call it spiraling?


As if my fall was anything other than brutal and ******.

I hear her sobs from the bathroom.
She tries to cover them up,
burying her face in a towel.
I sit on the couch,
let her tears become the background for my evening.
Later, when she leaves the bathroom,
I'll pretend that I don't notice,
how her mascara has run and her eyes are all red.
We'll sit on the couch and share a bowl of popcorn,
Because I know she hears me too.

If you said you were cold
I would wrap my arms around you

If you said you were thirsty
I would give you the ocean blue

I would give you anything,
The moon, the stars, the sunset too.

This heart in my hands I hold out to you

I can never quite decide if I miss you more when you are away or sitting next to me.

When we are parted I feel it as an ache,
a permanent tightness of the chest,
a shallowness of breath:
I cannot fill my lungs if not with you.
I go about my day distracted,
spending half my time imagining you by my side.

But when you are beside me it is an entirely different, subtle, kind of pain.
An unrelenting itch to touch you,
hold you,
feel you,
anything other than just sitting here pretending everything is normal.
It is as if you held a magnet next to a paper clip and told the paper clip not to move
that is how I feel sitting beside you,
too close, but never close enough.

So if I ever seem distracted as you talk,
darling please forgive me.
Simply know that your lips have entranced me so,
that with every movement,
every carefully choose word,
every articulated phase,
I find my self using all of my willpower not
to lean forward and kiss them.

All I can feel is sorry.

It feels every space where there should be other emotions.
Or comes linked with them.

I'm mad, sorry
I love you, sorry
I'm sorry, sorry

I'm sorry for the things I've done,
things I haven't done,
but mostly what I will do in the future.

I know I'm going to hurt you
so every time I talk to you all I can feel is guilt.
Every time you smile I am reminded of how soon that will be gone and it will be my fault.

So when I apologize for every little thing
it's not really because I'm that sorry for stealing your fries,
it's to apologize for the future when I won't be able to.

They told me not to set myself on fire to keep someone else warm. But god do the flames feel good.

"I want you here but I also want not to want you here"

"why do you do this to yourself?" he asked her, holding her arm gently. He was so sincere she couldn't bring herself to lie. "because at least the cuts on the outside heal."

left bleeding from mental lacerations

tangled in my skinny jeans

slinking heroically downriver.

we don't say  goodbye.  we know it's the end but maybe not saying   it will make the world  stop  for   just a     moment        longer.

We broke silently at night.

        

                         As not to inconvenience anyone

The trees look like statues
And we're on a roller coaster ride.
We go fast
Because it is a race -
I think we're going to win!
I think were going to win!
The other cars will be sad,
With their people inside.
Go faster Daddy!
Go faster.

The end is like a wall.

Why are there so many sad poems?
Did the old masters write sing verses about depression and anxiety?
Or is that a new feature?

I don't ask to be pretentious.
To bemoan the state of the new generation.
But I have to wonder,
Has the poets changed?
Or have I?

Our generation has learned one thing:
How to break over and over and over and over again,
Barely piecing together the pieces before they shatter again.
So is it a surprise to anyone that the poets speak of heartbreak and pain?
It is all we know.

Or is it all in my head?
Do I simply think I see more tragic poems because I seek them out?
Only remember the poems that make me cry,
'cause sadness the only emotion I can feel anymore.