The world around me has become so loud,
Drowning out the sound of my existence,
As if I don’t exist at all.
I’m still there,
Ripples in the puddles I drown in,
Whispers of wind through trees I fall from,
A rotten fruit.
I’m hidden somewhere in the Earth,
Suffocating beneath the weight of the soil and my memories.
I don’t want them to go away,
I don’t want the pain of the past to leave me,
But it’s running down my legs,
A thick red liquid,
It’s infecting my dreams,
Smothering me with smoke.
I need it to be quiet,
Let me breathe.
The dull ache I’ve spent a lifetime keeping at bay,
Chained deep within my brain,
Rising to the surface,
Screeching along its tracks as it careens towards me.
I feel so small,
So fragile,
So weak.
I can’t hear myself think.

One day I will wake up weightless,
With a steady heart,
With rested eyes that will not cry.
One day I will have only good dreams,
Free from fear,
Free from sadness.
One day my mind will be calm,
My thoughts will be good,
My hands will be still.
One day I will live to be alive,
Not just out of spite or guilt,
Not just because I feel I owe it to my mother.
One day I will be here because I choose to be,
I will want to be,
I will hope to be.
One day I will be sorry for who I was in the meantime,
One day.

I wish my existence could be as poetic as my subconscious,
As graceful,
Elegantly dancing through life,
Like metaphors on a page,
Rain filling puddles,
Mud filling cracks,
Swaying arms of willow trees.
I think that I used to be that way,
I appear to be in the hazy happiness of my memories,
But I don’t trust my mind.
I look back on a life lived in pastels,
Baby blue skies,
Blush pink cheeks,
Sage green eyes,
Lilac dreams.
It’s all daisy chains and braids,
A freckled face,
Ferns and worms,
Rolling clouds and running streams.
I wonder now if those memories are just dreams,
Did they ever really happen?
Was I ever really happy?
Or was it all just manufactured to protect me,
A safety blanket,
A quilt handcrafted by my mother?
I wonder now if my life is just an amalgamation of stolen moments,
Memories stitched together by glorified nostalgia,
Fabricated by a veil so thin,
Made entirely of imagination,
A fictitious eulogy written by me as a child to remember the life I wish I had,
A life I’ve never lived,
A tortured poet trapped in a painfully privileged portrait.
Who can I trust if not myself to remember my own life?
I grew up cold,
Stuck in the rain with a broken umbrella,
With stormy eyes and a stormy mind,
Deep greens and blues,
Scarring scrapes from the sharpest scraps of misery.
I was born in the image of hatred,
Generational distaste that I inherited,
The quietest violence,
Gentle wrath buried beneath the softest reflection.
Tell me I’m beautiful,
Oh, how sweet,
Tiny and weak.
Admire all the lies I’ve told myself to stay alive,
Hiding my agony in metaphors,
Tucking it neatly between stanzas,
A great illusion,
Fallacious lines describing a person I'll never be.

It’s raining
In this place that doesn’t rain
This place that’s made of dust
Rocky and bright
It’s raining
And I’m crying
The trees are being watered
As I am withering
Life is being given to death
Barren land
Empty scenes
And I’m dying
In the rain where it shouldn’t be raining
Rain that is not like home
Let me go home
The home that I left
The dungeon I escaped
Let me go back
I want to go back
Where pain made sense
Where rain was supposed to rain
Where tears were supposed to be shed
I want my mother to hug me while she screams
Bruises and bad dreams
I want my father to leave me while I weep
Unwilling to see
I want that pain
Anything over my vacant brain
I want to feel again
Anything
I was invisible
Forgettable
So completely free
My mind was mine
It wandered and it dreamed
Please
Put me out of this empty misery
Take me back home where nowhere feels safe
I want rain where there should be rain
Pain where there should be pain

I listen to male artists,
Men who remind me of my father,
And his pain,
And my pain.
I imagine they sing to me,
Protect me,
Love me,
Give me all I've never been given before,
Everything I was supposed to feel,
Everything that was supposed to show me how people work.
I listen to deep, strained voices and reflect,
Connect to things I’ll never experience.
Men are angry,
Worthy of their feelings,
Allowed to unleash their rage in screams and electric guitars and unnecessarily loud drum solos.
I listen to music sung by men,
But I also listen to Stevie Nicks,
Joni Mitchell,
Janis Joplin,
Joan Baez,
Even Dolly Parton.
Hell, even Olivia Rodrigo.
I listen to women who are angry,
Angry and still women,
Surviving through agony and still women,
“Leather and lace,”
Black clothes and black makeup,
Singing about beauty and moonlight and darkness,
Female rage.
I don't have to be at peace to be a woman,
I don't have to be happy to be a woman,
I don't have to be pretty to be a woman,
You don’t have to like me for me to still be a woman.
Let me be angry,
Let me feel pain,
Let me be lost,
Let me like the darkness,
Let me find comfort in the night,
Let me chase impossible dreams and impossible feelings,
Let me feel everything I feel.
Women are put in a box of emotions,
Too sensitive,
Too dramatic,
Too simple.
I am not sensitive or dramatic or simple,
Don't put me in that box,
Don’t tell me what I am,
Don’t tell me how to feel,
Don’t tell me what my feelings mean,
What they make me,
Don’t project your weakness onto me,
I am not weak,
I am not weak,
I am not weak.
Let me be raw and witchy and honest,
Let me be intelligent and intuitive,
Let me see more than you'll ever see in the world,
Let me be frustrated and misunderstood and just a little too loud,
Let me be a woman,
Let me be me the way I should be.

I can’t stop writing to you,
About you,
For you.
Every word in every poem,
All my ramblings,
Incoherent thoughts,
They’re all addressed to you.
Something within me thinks you’ll stumble upon them,
Find them by accident,
Wonder if it’s crazy to see yourself there.
I can promise that you are the “you” I keep writing to,
The only one I hope will read my words,
Get the words,
Feel the words,
See me through them.
I’ve been whispering my feelings,
Hiding them in metaphors,
Riddles between stanzas,
Organized neatly and subtly in the lines of my poetry.
I want to scream them.
I want them to be loud and clear and sure,
The way they are in my mind,
My heart,
My spirit.
I am so filled with love for you,
So consumed by it.
I feel like a coward for hiding behind the puzzles I fabricate with words.
I am so afraid the more I feel,
The more I say,
The less you’ll want me.
I’m so afraid that acknowledging your grasp on my mind,
Your place in my poems,
Is a reality you’re not ready to accept.
I’ve waited so patiently for the right time,
Tried so hard to find the right combination of words,
But I don’t know how I’ll live if there is no right time,
If the right words elude me.
That’s a pain I know I can’t handle,
Truthfully,
Regretfully,
Torturously,
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to.

I’ve never cared much about what I look like.
I’m not one to obsess over my appearance,
Getting my makeup right,
Fighting my hair until it looks just the way I want it.
I find it all a waste of time.
People will say you’re pretty,
They’ll admire and they’ll lust,
But they don’t care about the time it took,
The choice to use your mother’s favorite lipstick,
The story behind your best friend’s blush.
They want to stare,
Not listen,
Not even see.
I’ve stopped looking at myself without makeup,
Started going out of my way to avoid my reflection.
I don’t care what I look like,
But I can’t stand to look her in the face,
The girl I used to be.
When I can see my freckles,
How my eyelashes really aren’t all that dark,
The strange curve of my left eyebrow,
All I can see is ribbons tied to the ends of twin braids,
Daisy chains,
Eyes the color of the Starry Night.
I wonder if she’d forgive me.
I wonder if I’ll forgive myself.