Scroll through the newsfeed
that feeds anything but your
starving human soul.

Labotomize these thumbs,
they scroll more than they strum.
I don't mean to be dumb,
but I can't respond back so I hum,
and you won't hear me.
No, you can't see the words that I write.
I'm sure you'd only
be tickled,
If you knew that I think of you all night.
Because I can't sleep, love.
And I can only touch me right,
Yeah, that's right.
Just me, love.
Hope I can keep up with this fight.
And I know you don't really care,
and you haven't got some spare
feelings left to share
and if there are, they're barely there.
So drop the pity,
I'm mad you got to hear me whine.
How unsexy.
I'm supposed to just be doing fine.
I'll compartmentalize,
put it in a box and tie it with twine.
while you're liking every post of mine.
I'll compartmentalize.
While I reread your every line.

I’ve never quite lived up to the expectations
that bombard every millennial these days,
the ones knocking and gnawing at my skin
until they find their way in
and search through each crevice in my brain
until they find the right residence to lay their bed
and plant the insecurities that end up
destroying my self-confidence
and gifting me with the inability to succeed
until I have to scrape every piece of residue from the inside-out
just to get myself to a place where I can breathe again.

Yeah, I don’t let those in anymore.

I’ve always been a little bit of a question mark,
a strange child who danced to my own beat,
even when I tried to walk in time with those surrounding,
and there is a small piece of me that -
when a new life event of someone my age
visits my newsfeed -
wants the same, tired story for my own life...
and then I remember
I wasn’t made for this.

Sometimes
I’m not sure what I was made for anymore,
and I just keep waiting and waiting
until it’s my time to be on my own,
or catch my heart on fire,
or simply take a step forward,
and, yet, it
never
happens.

There are things I know about myself
that I will never explain,
and I shouldn’t have to.
I have a key-shaped hole in my soul
that aches to find its perfect fit,
but I’m not allowed to twist it yet,
though my fist has been ready for years,
and all I can do in the meantime
when someone asks me
why
is answer with one simple phrase
that stings each time it passes through my lips:

*It’s not my time yet.

People come into your life as
Quickly as they come, never
Staying for long there are
Cases where they do stay,
Your closest friends, your
Best friends, your loved
Ones
But others just disappear and
Leave completely, dropping out
Of your life never talking to you
Again, lost connections of how
You became friends, the shared
Stories, secrets, good times
And memories. All you have now
Is seeing random Facebook
Statuses of you with new
Friends or Instagram selfies
With tons of new people
Do you remember us being
Friends?
If I sent a text, a message
Anything would you answer?
Would you talk to me again?
If I done wrong can I right it?
Can we be friends again?
Or am I just a random Facebook
Status popping on your newsfeed
And nothing else

after years of being told how good my body was
i went through puberty.

after years of being asked how much time i spent at the gym
i grew hips
and disconcerting  looks from grown men who thought my fifteen year old thighs were too thick to be sexualized.

after years of wearing sundresses
and being applauded for being the first girl in my grade to grow *****
my metabolism slowed down
and i was made to feel like a cowbell in the least practical sense of the word.

i was thirteen and hunched over a porcelain toilet bowl when i told my friend i had purged and she called me gross as if it wasn't because of feeling "gross" that i was there to begin with.

and i'd grown used to my good-gened friends with their tiny waists and size 32 jeans telling me they wanted to join a gym in hopes i'd run along and lose some weight.

because when i was 13 and weighed little enough to turn heads i felt empty while looking whole.

and when you're fat you can't have an eating disorder, because illness can be seen so how good of a job my ana was doing depended solely on how faint i felt by midday.

in a world where nobody buys magazines it's easy to pretend we don't care for skinny bodies anymore, but when every smartphone is linked to an instagram page and every newsfeed is filled with "slim thick baddies" you can't help but wonder.

if i were to feel physically full why am i so empty?
i cheated myself.
she probably went and cheated on me because my body wasn't slim-thick enough to eat.

and it's easy to say this doesn't apply to me when you see the pictures on the beach but you don't see me scrolling through pinterest at 2 in the morning looking at "How To Lose 10 kgs in 3 Days" posts.

if i were so lucky i'd be a success story and could probably post before and after pictures of my body but you can not hear the ache in my belly screaming at me that it'd rather just be cut off.

when i was fourteen i could no longer wear shorts in public because grown men with wives would turn and watch my thighs clip-clap together as i walked with my dad.
i was asking for it.
i resented summer and the fact that i'd run out of clean pairs of jeans to sweat in.

but if i dare love myself, what then? do i apologise to the girlfriends of the boys who visit me for coffee? do i drink coke light with my whiskey? do i start writing poetry?

Why do we ignore all these spoken words?

We've had
poets,
rappers,
artists,
and actors
tell us as
it were.

Now I, myself, have spit one or two verse
and I need to let you know  I will be heard.*

You call for a social media blackout and
there they sit thinking, " How absurd!"

But when it comes down to it
what do you do when there is
no reaction* to your tear-filled  words?

Is it because we have adapted to being so passive,
when there's ****, murders, lynchings, and theft
we just take it in passing?

Or is it because we can look the other way,
when the hands of a white man
take the life of a different ethnicity away?

Is it in relation to power?
We close our eyes
and pray.
But where is the action
for justice in this final hour?

What is it that you do to help this land?
Other than observe and comment snidely
on your fellow man?

It is no tragedy for a loss of life?
While you ponder your "newsfeed"
via social media
via your Iphone
via your wifi
....
Consider the point when you lost touch with real life.

25...
When you were a kid you thought that you would be married by now
Have it all figured out
The career
The home
The car
The kids
Now you're here and *******...
Do we ever really figure it out?
Adulting is hard
Your Facebook feed is filling up with engagements and baby announcements
but your reading the newsfeed in the liquor isle of Safeway
Beer or wine tonight? Hmm maybe *****?
"Psh who wants to be a boring married couple"
That's what you think to yourself
Trying to convince yourself that it's okay
Drown out that little voice in your head saying "you're gonna be alone forever"
It's like walking on a tightrope
One side you have it together and the other side you still might as well be that 21 year old college student ordering shots at the bar
If someone has this figured out- hit a homie up
Until then, I'm just doing me and I guess I'm doing fine

I miss being on ur Page.
I miss the tags.
I miss u on my newsfeed.
I jus miss us.
I guess im used to it now.
Iv missed it so much..

The saying goes
"It takes 21 days to make or break a habit"
but it's been 71 and I've yet to even crack the surface on this one
I made a routine out of pretending to be stronger than what
I pretended you made me into, and that was weak.
I created a pattern in my head and brought it to life:
you were the reason I was this way and here is why:
what we had was a habit,
I'll spare the details because they're just as boring as the same series I've been watching on Netflix for a month without a purpose.
***, fight, make up, ignore problems, watch tv, sleep and eat ****** food, more ***.
You could smell the latex for two years before we stopped using a ****** and taking that risk became routine.
We knew all the answers to jeopardy but we kept watching and I think that's because we tried to pretend that we didn't know things that we already did
and look where it led.

It was a habit.
It was comfort after a week of routines we led separately but somehow over the course of three years never talked about deeply.
"How was school?"
Out of habit I say "okay"
How was work? "slow"
"I don't care what we order"
"Just pick something"
"Do you want to have ***?"
"Can you push over?"
"Who are you texting?"
"why do you always do this?"
"Are you finished being mad yet?"
"I need you in my life, please don't leave"

As humans we crave stability but do not know that what it brings instead is a suffocating cycle that should not feel so permanent at nineteen and twenty


So when we broke up I made a habit out of checking up on you
made a pattern out of blaming you for not wanting to leave my bed,

two whole months later.

What they don't tell you about habits is that 21 days is not enough to break down walls that held you in place for 956 days, even if you weren't very happy,
at least you were warm and at least you had something there to remind you that you always had something to fall back on,
even if it was weighing down your shoulders,
even if it would crack around you one day.

I made a habit out of projecting the blame onto others too,
like saying "would crack around you" one day.
Like I was warning others that love is not forever and to be cautious who you let inside your walls because I did not want to see you there inside when they fall,
when they really fell around me
and two months later,
it's a habit to still check in to make sure you're happy.
Scrolling your newsfeed though you have me blocked, I'm sure you know I do it anyway so you routinely make yourself look better than ever, satisfied in all that you have and I hope you are that way,  I really do
5 days a week in a factory coming home to microwave noodles and a small love seat is not ideal but it's comforting.
And so we accept these facts and allow ourselves to repeat
all we want sometimes is comfort, we don't even need to be happy if we have a place to sleep.

it is still a routine to forget about taking care of my self because that takes away time from caring for you and selfish is one word I never strive to be so I spend my days remembering all the things we repeated over and over.

I will always blame you because it is so hard not to.

I hope one day I don't.

Some days I try and make a habit out of pretending I'm angry with you when in all actuality I miss the stability of calling someone mine.
I don't know why I do this thing where I pretend like I didn't love you as much as I did,
as much as I do. Still.
I guess it's a habit because I have so much to live up to;
this "hard girl" image isn't easy, you know, but for 71 days it's what I've come to know is what I need to move on maybe half as fast as you did.
Maybe I wasn't a routine for you because I know you well enough to know you were stuck in your ways for longer than 21 days so many times and it was not easy to break through them.
Maybe I was different.
I think I loved you a lot more and that's why I have pages of words,
and bags of glass bottles,
I've made a routine out of this and you have done absolutely nothing.


21 days?
That's absurd.
I just let 21 days pass without trying to even move on

what happens if you don't want to break the habit?
I'm sorry, what happens if I don't want to break the habit?
What if I miss it?
What if I want it back although that habit is far gone and moved on?


What do I do now but blame that habit for my lack of motivation now as my fingers wear out the paint on the keyboard of this computer and I blame you for my weight gain and inability to stop drinking even though you told me never to start in the first place because you know I have an addictive personality and it's so hard for me to
break habits?

Once I get started on a new one I'm sure I will be fine.
they say it only takes 21 days, anyway.