On the night of my fifteenth birthday,
I cried myself to sleep.
It was ugly crying, the type of choking-into-pillowcases
that makes your stomach hurt,
almost as much as your heart.

I think emptiness is somehow the most consuming
because it takes all of you, and overwhelms it with
deafening nothingness.
Like absence somehow has substance,
and the absence of feeling had a feeling.

It was never as hard as I made it out to be,
because sitting in a house that the rent could not be paid for
was not the same as going hungry on the streets.
But I was unhappy regardless, despite, in defiance of
all the small joys in my life.

A beautiful poetry book. A glass bottle of soda.
A burning stick of incense. A bouquet of flowers.
A new set of bedsheets. A text from a friend.
All the small joys in my life,
in which I could find none.