Lately, I’ve been waking up every morning at 8am like clockwork, with tears in my eyes and on my cheeks, clawing their way out of my face like they’re running from something,
And a sense of panic that I can only describe as seeing an animal in your car’s headlights but not being able to slow down quick enough

Do you understand, how ******* disgusting it is to not feel like you’re able to write anything until everything feels like it’s on fire, and your only way of putting it out is to cough up a bunch of metaphors and hope they’re wet enough

Sometimes when I get really anxious I like to take road trips,
And when I’m driving,
I like to close my eyes,
Just so I can remember what it’s like to not possibly have any control of anything

Sometimes when I get really anxious, I try to recite the alphabet backwards,
Just so I can remember what it’s like to be able to forget something

Sometimes, it feels like I’ve been taking the wrong medicine at the wrong times and the right medicine doesn’t have a right time,
Only feel alive in the night time, take deep breaths,
We are alone in this,
You and I are alone in this,
We are in some way,
Together in this

When I think about anxiety, I like to think about it like it’s a bee,
and I wish that it would die after it stung me,
But I know it won’t,
I know it will keep on,
I know that it will drip it’s honey into the eyes of all of my closest friends and family,
And sometimes it will become too thick to see through,
And they will learn to live with it,
And I will learn to live with it

Sometimes, when I get really anxious, I am the sunset,
I envy moon, I would give anything to be able to see the way the trees move at night,
Silent, but fast, I was always told there was some kind of magic to be talked about when it came to the dark

Yes, I’m not lying when I tell you I’m riding high,
I’m feeling it all at once, everything around me, from everyone’s faces, to their footsteps, it is all running a marathon through my veins, the finish line nowhere to be found, I feel them all, all of them, their angry and driven footsteps, using the soil of my blood to plant their gardens inside of me that will one day without fail turn rotten, and die,
and my body will feel the decay of drought when my blood runs dry, when the sunlight is no longer strong enough to break through my thick skin,
I feel like the sunlight

Yes, I’m not lying when I tell you I’m riding high,
Cold, and shaking, itching for the comfort of normality inside of this hellscape, a national landmark of uneasiness and lack of empathy for the fingers on my hands and toes on my feet,
It takes a real kind of high to be able to feel when every single hair on your head moves in the wind and every single hair on the back of your neck raises, as if it’s trying to stand guard against something it knows will **** it

I find myself here, locked and loaded in this hazy battlefield, yet when I fire my guns, the only thing that comes out is dirt, and not enough of it either

I am riding high in the midst of 6 sleepless nights,
firing lucid canons into my bedroom walls in hopes that if nothing else, my delusions will break me a way out of here

That’s what this is all about anyways, right?

It’s 6:47am on a Monday morning on I-71 south towards Cincinnati and I’m driving in the middle lane entirely surrounded by semis and service trucks and out of nowhere, like it was some miracle act of God, it starts pouring down rain so hard that all of the traffic stops in the height of morning rush hour, everyone’s radios playing morning talk shows so loud it vibrates the ground our tires are on and everyone’s coffees move back into their hands from their cup holders, I guess we’re all just trying to wait it out right now

I guess I have no choice but to wait it out right now, he says, hoodie wrinkled, two all nighter’s deep and still no passing grade, standing outside of the campus Starbucks, as it’s pouring down rain

I guess we’ll have to wait it out, says my sister to an 8 year old me, as I wait on the curb of our neighborhood for the ice cream truck, no matter how disfigured the spongebob popsicle’s face looks by the time I get it in my hands, and no matter the fact that I never understood that his eyes were bubblegum

I guess I have to wait it out, my father says, watching my grandmother lying in her hospital bed, getting tests taken for her potentially and what would be proven deadly, lung cancer,
Her eyes glossed over and her lips still yearning for the pull of her usual afternoon pack of cigarettes

You just have to wait it out, says my grandpa, standing next to me in his garden, after having helped me plant my first tomato seeds,
The summer has felt like forever at 10 years old, I wish it stayed that way, and I wish I liked tomatoes

I guess we just have to wait it out now, the head of police says to his crew of swat members, after having everything fail towards coaxing a young high school boy out of his boarded up bedroom, the shotgun he killed his ex girlfriend with, still in his arms

Well, we’re just going to have to wait it out,
I think to myself as I sit in this traffic at what is now exactly 7am on a rainy Monday morning in the middle lane of I-71 south towards Cincinnati, entirely surrounded by semis and service trucks

The rain will stop eventually

Mental illness, put simply, is not knowing how to explain what it feels like, and feeling like it wouldn’t even matter, even if you did know

Mental illness, put simply, is not,
It isn’t simple,
I watched my best friends hurt themselves to feel things because their bodies did magic tricks to make them feel like everything felt like nothing,
Like everything, should feel like nothing,
Like nothing, is what everything feels like

Last week I talked to my mother about her anxiety, and the god she prays to for it hasn’t emailed her back, yet she keeps refreshing her inbox,
I wonder if that’s how you explain it

As a suicidal teenager, I used to sneak out of my bedroom window at night and take walks around my neighborhood, telling myself that maybe if I looked hard enough into the moon, God would meet me halfway,
This isn’t a poem about losing faith, but man, where’s the faith store and who can help me find some? I’m broke, don’t get me wrong, but that’s how faith works, right?

A few weeks ago, a mutual friend of mine dove head first back into drugs, claiming that her goal was to just simply, feel something, after taking such a long time to finally feel nothing

Breathe slow, take it easy, it’s gonna be a long ride,
Crack the window, you’ll be fine,
Set yourself on fire, just so you can say you’ve finally put yourself out,
Strap in if you want to, but only if you want to

A) I’ve met people who take it neck deep, feet first, fast, and relentlessly,
B) I’ve met people who keep the bandages on,
C) I’ve met people who don’t have any bandages, constantly drowning in the mess they think they’ve created,
D) I’ve met people who think that they would rather be dead,
E) I’ve met people who don’t want to think about it anymore

Hello, nice to meet you, I’m F) all of the above,
And I want to talk to you about the months and months I’ve spent in a row, wide awake in pools of sweat, shivering in my blankets, knowing that nothing could possibly be as ugly as this poem, but **** man, nothing is much prettier, everything is ugly, so nothing is pretty

Hello, nice to meet you, I’m nothing, none of us are everything,

We are all nothing,

Aren’t we all so pretty?

Goodnight moonlight,

Sweet dreams, moonlight,

I am away now,

Driving under your blanket, your bright stars lighting everywhere dark,

It is a late hot summer night, however I have turned the heat on, on this long summer road,

It reminds me of you,

Warm, open, and free,

I like it this way,

Windows down, hot air blowing, there is no room for cold here,

I like to play the radio soft,

It reminds me of you,

Stevie, you feel like the 80s,

And your voice reminds me of hers too,

My headlights illuminating the street signs just enough for them to dance, like everything has just a little bit of magic in it,

The first time I met you, you shook my hand, moonlight, and you were embarrassed about it, I thought it was kind of cute,

I might just keep you in my chest pocket on this ride home,

I will see you tomorrow night,

Same time, same place,

Goodnight moonlight

How easy it would be to be able to pick and choose who we suffer for

Draw a bath and tie the hair back, poor a glass of wine, and relax,
Go down a list and write check marks or exes next to the names of our skeletons, the places we hide away into at night,
How easy it would be

I’m not here to say that it isn’t easy, I’m just here to fantasize about not picking the gaps between your teeth until there’s enough space for everyone who’s wronged you to slide into, create a home and live

Sometimes I like to write symphonies using the tones of voicemails I’ve received because I just don’t have the guts to pick up the phone,
To be able to orchestrate absolute feeling on a whim,
How easy it would be

But instead, we’re here, teeter tottering between how many cigarettes we’ll have left by the end of all of this, or how happy we could be, or simply how bad a hangover we’re going to have in the morning,
But we’re soldiers like this

And the rations will last us— just long enough,
To pick the phone up when our friends call,
Tell them we love them, listen to that one paramore album over and over until we become 15 again,
Immerse ourselves into whatever nostalgia we refuse to let go of

How easy it would be,
To be able to pick and choose who we suffer for

We are all in one way or another, bugs on a windshield,
Some of us are the bugs, some of us are the windshield, some of us are the car, some of us are all of these

We tattoo each other’s names in Braille on our chests to see how bumpy the roads are going to look, and how painful it’s actually all going to be,
We keep them there forever, or, long enough for our mothers to see

How much beauty and life comes to an abrupt end when we are flying fast and relentless, hitting a windshield,
I wonder how long the driver of the car will even bother to worry about it,
Just turn on the wipers and get the guts off of the view of the sunrises and sunsets

We are all in one way or another just, bugs on a windshield,
I am the windshield,
When I get ***** from someone else, I like to imagine that I can just turn my wipers on and wipe away everything they carried around with them for all of that time,
On my body, you can find stains left from all of the bugs that have killed themselves on my skin,
Their blood and juices, permanently a home in my creases, I stay awake trying to paint a better picture of the sunrises and sunsets for the people driving me

We are all in one way or another just, bugs on a windshield,
Other times, I am the car,
A soulless machine built to carry luggage from one point to another,
A hard shell built to protect everyone who finds solace in me,
Do not worry,
The bugs mean nothing,
That is what my windshield is for

Just keep listening to the radio,
I can turn my wipers on

There is a full moon out tonight and all of the ghosts inside of us are freeing themselves to fight the battles they weren’t allowed when they were alive,
One time I set my house on fire just to see how long it’d take me to get out,
But I lie awake in bed and refuse escape,
I guess we all have our flaws,
Sometimes they’re better off asleep than awake,
Sometimes it’s better to keep it all inside than say anything at all,
I often wonder why it took me so long

I often wonder how long it’ll take me to bleed,
Will I be the one with the knife or will it be someone else’s blame?
I can’t really say, I can’t really say anything at all

I’ll lay awake in this bed and light the candles to my own funeral,
These thoughts seem to have been dead for centuries,
When it comes to having faults, I’ve been on a roll for days,
It’s safe to say

It’s safe to say, really,
You’re protected here,
You can cry all you want to, no one will ever hear you,
Sink and swim up and down the river,
Head in and under water,
I’ll write these hymns until my lungs are filled with the river

I’ll sing these songs until my breaths are muffled with the fire,
Write these hymns, sing these songs into the fire,
Cut all of the wires,
Slash all of the tires,
We don’t want to go anywhere at all,
We’re going to miss the party

At the bottom of the ocean and in the pit of the fire,
We don’t want to miss the party

Let us never miss a party