I look at you like
You put the stars in the sky

When you drink its as if
You tear them all down and
Right before my eyes

You change

Scraped knees and burnt lungs
Hair pulling and touching tongues
Study hard, fail a class
Makeup on, the perfect mask
Scales and ***, you have no power
One night stand, take a shower
Class at eight, get up at nine
Lie to your parents, "I'm doing fine"
Black lace bra, **** dress
Frat house party, look your best
Pills and smokes, just one more
Boy comes over, shut the door
Greedy hands and spoken words
Words he says he never heard
Sink running, your eyes are too
Look in the mirror, someone new
Black circles, white washed skin
"How the hell did I get so thin"
Another pill, another chapter
The college life everyone's after

We talk as if
Your hands have more wrinkles
And your eyes have seen
The world

As if
I don't deserve your
Time or effort because
You don't want to be seen with
An embarrassment like me, because
I haven't "lived"

But please don't forget
You once looked at me with
Eyes that didn't need
To see the world,
And once, your inexperienced
Hands were used for learning the curves
Of my body rather than illustrating
The journeys that have made you so
Cultured and wise

Darling, I'm so sorry, but
You've got it all wrong
As if you know what
It really means to
Live

11:45
Sitting on the beach staring up at my
"High School" friends,
Isn't that weird, having to put the word
High School before so you know I'm not talking about
All the other people I've met since college

It may not seem like it matters but it does
Because these are the people I grew up with and now
Everything feels so different

11:50
They're lighting another joint, I watch their eyes
Go from open and alert to smiling and red
I don't join them and they look at me like I've changed
Into an entirely different person
But it's not just that which makes me feel
So out of place

11:55
A white lie of feeling sick puts me back in my car
To send me back to the "comfort" of my home
But the only sickness I'm feeling is the
Depression deep in my stomach

11:59
I pull up to a red light and stare
Absent minded at the car in front of me

12:00
Happy Birthday to me. Green light.
I turn left and seriously contemplate
Driving my car head first into the stone wall ahead of me

12:03
Another red light
I tell myself I can't think like that
But am so surprised that college didn't make me
More normal. I expected it to change me
In so many more ways than it has

12:10
Pull into the drive way and
Carry myself up the same stairs I've been
Climbing since I was born
I don't think anyone should live in the same house
For nineteen years
There are memories hiding in the walls and
Secrets behind every closed door that can't escape me

Present Time
I'm in bed writing this meaningless poem
Thinking about him, and it's giving me this
Weird feeling in my fingertips

My computer has had this virus for the past two months
That I keep ignoring, too lazy to fix, too busy to find out
What exactly is wrong
I think my computer and I have a lot in common

So Happy Birthday to me
Nineteen seems like such a hollow age to be