My body keeps buzzing
like the sound of
one thousand cicadas
reborn with the spring
and I thought they would flee
with the first frost of the season
and yet there is snow falling
from the deep grey sky
and my bones keep rattling inside me
and the cicadas never die.

What I know about life,
which is much less than I’d like at 22,
is that hope is going to come to you
disguised as failure
in a bright crimson bow
laced with sleepless nights
that somehow lead to being alright
until one day there is a light
under your door
and time doesn’t scare you so much
anymore

The water makes me forget,
yet I remember
the waves lapping on sand,
except we haven’t had enough rain
in years for the lake to reach the shore,
this is my favorite place
but it feels just as tired as I do,
living up to expectations of the past
barely meeting requirements of placehood.
I’ve lost the special that once consumed me
dilapidated buildings and broken promises
link the memories between
place and person
deterioration reminding me
that I am not the only thing
searching for peace
and finding loss in its place.

Each night I am kept awake
by this timed ticking madness
embedded in my skull
reminding me of who I could have been,
motion picture madness,
blood in the back of my throat madness,
breaking at the sight of dawn madness,
teeth bending at the notion of truth madness,
lungs filling with sadness
and beginning to drown
madness,
in every cell of my body
madness,
breaking my own heart
in the middle of another night
waiting for the sun to shine
madness

I have been told I look like my mother
in the way we laugh at the same jokes
and show love through our eyes,
emotions never quite being able to hide
and I always take these comments in
with so much admiration and pride,
yet when my mother says she hates how she looks
I begin to think that is a reflection of me.
If we are the same
does she not point these poisonous thoughts
at my chest too?
Bulls-eye patterned loathing
that strikes in the same place twice,
and I am left to wonder whether
her self-hatred is not just for one
but for two.

It has been four years
and I have not written a better poem
than the best poem I have ever written,
stuck in a repetitive loop
of not good enough,
never exceeding
what I was once able to do
my fingers ache for another masterpiece
but my brain refuses to provide
any sort of solace that would come with
writing a good poem,
a great poem,
something that would make me proud again

A friend asked me
“What do fish do all day?”
and I replied
“Find a way to survive,
eat and keep moving
and hope that when it comes
time to die
death finds you
in the least painful way it can,
exactly what humans do,
but without knowing
the painful truth
that their life didn’t mean much
in the first place”