this is not a poem. no poetic format would be able to handle this prose, so here it is, raw and real and in the moment (and every other moment as well).

i don’t belong anywhere. i have no purpose, yet i’m stuck. i am being kept here against my will. the resistance is brutal. no house, no street, no pair of arms can be a home to me. i am unlovable, and that is a fault of my own. i have made myself this way.

i used to always long for companionship; now i never let anyone get too close. the amount of pain i will bring you is not worth the fight, i promise. i tell everyone to stay away, knowing it is for their own good. wasting time on an impending doom is no way to live a life. so go on and live yours.

sometimes things move way too fast; other times, they don’t move fast enough. i can feel the crowds push me down the city sidewalks. i can’t find my feet, i don't know how to step forward; my lungs lose themselves somewhere in my body. i can never remember how to breathe. and then everything stops. pause. and then it starts again, only now, the crowds move differently. it’s too slow. go faster, go faster, i can handle this. i can deal with it. but the constant change makes me realize i can’t. no amount of practice can prepare me for this reality. i will never be ready for what’s already here.

there is this growing, black hole somewhere within me. i cannot locate it, and it cannot be seen from the surface. but its presence leaves me with a feeling that can never be forgotten. i have tried to push it out of my head, but this stain has set itself into my white sheets for eternity.

what is morning, and what is night. it all feels the same to me. every day is connected to the previous and the following. it’s just one, big, never-ending day, then, and i am part of the same tragic cycle.

there are cuffs around my ankles and chains anchoring me to the ground. there are rocks sitting at the bottom of my stomach. inside, it is cold and dark; i think it has been this way ever since things became too much for me. i am deserted.

but i am not a walking ghost town. i am not barren. in fact, i’m quite the opposite. i am a fountain, practically overflowing with sadness. there is so much of it, and it keeps building on itself. it keeps pulling me down. life under the water’s surface, they call it- always looking up makes you want to drown.

filled with sadness, yet simultaneously empty. i have felt almost everything there is to feel, i am certain of it. the only feelings i am familiar with now are the ones characterized by falling rain and colorless walls. i have forgotten what happiness is. i don’t even know if i ever was truly happy, and i don't think i’ll ever be given a chance to try once more.

so here i am, feeling everything again, and being miserable while doing it. i’ve gotten stuck in this vicious rotation of feeling different things at once. like when you mix every single paint color you own together. individually, they might be likable. you might have a favorite, and then a not-so-favorite. but when all of them are swirled together, it doesn’t create anything beautiful. it creates an ugly, overwhelming mess. true, you still have all of your colors, you’ve still got everything you started with; but through having everything, you now have nothing. after all the colors have run together, you’re left without a color, with black; the same nothingness that hangs in my chest.

this- this is how i feel. it is such a terribly defeating feeling.

and i think it’s feeling so much of everything at once that makes me want to feel nothing at all.