My tinny laugh fills rooms my lungs could only hope to achieve
Merriment and the soul of old Bachus
fills this weary frame
I'm told I'm so full of life
The life of the party
So happy that I exhale living
I'm living
I am alone in my room
I'm living
Haggard blonde hair and purple eyes look at me in the mirror
my face is red, my marbles are bleeding
Thoughts of stories and characters I love with all my heart
emesis on pages that used to be blank
I talk to myself almost constantly
words and phrases repeated in a Tourettic staccato
Blinking away the inner rain as I walk into stores
"Sometimes I just get hit with an intense sadness
Where I want to curl into myself
Light the forge of my heart
Warm these dying limbs"
I am told I look so happy
And I wonder if I perhaps should have gone into acting
I feel so often like the cliche
asking myself in between podcast and music and porn
"It's...never going to get better is it?"
and I've spent so many years fighting to answer that question
I've spent many years fighting for the answers
to questions that I don't want to ask
I'm struck by fits of inexorable sadness
and two decades of reflection has given me nothing but these words
written in dark rooms
with my smiling face
the life of the party