Life’s like an old rose garden,
once blooming,
now withering.

Petals falling,
replaced by dry leaves,
wrapped in silence,
once so rare,
now so heavy.

I return home,
laughter ringing in ears.

But as the door shuts,
loneliness greets me,
like a cold, hazy mist,
or dark clouds that the stars resist.

Every day is a performance, a never ending act
I always must perform or people will attack
I've become nothing more than a fake
I've no idea how much more I can take
They've forced me to hide who I love, who I am-deep down inside
When all I've ever wanted is to embrace myself with pride
They force me to wear a mask
Every day, a constant task

“Be yourself, be independent” they say
Yet when I do, they always turn away
It shouldn't be like this, it isn't ******* fair
But who am I kidding, they don't ever care
The only time they care is when there's another suicide on TV
I worry I'll share that fate, just another statistic to be
I don't know where to go or what to do
So I'm crying for help, a message to you

why is it
that when you're always sad
it's so easy to fake a smile

Okay,
But why do we exist?
What is the purpose of this game?
Are we being controlled
By some invisible being?
Like strings on a marionette?
Or are we all alone in this universe
Words lost in the wind?
What if we aren't even real
And this is all just a dream?
What if this whole life
We all built
Friends,
Family,
Home,
(Poetry accounts),
Is just fake
A little thing
That we made up
And one day,
We will just wake up?
And not know what to do?
We lived the while thing
And now we have to start over?

I stand up.
I was there for a long time
This fake world

What if I was right?

i fake a smile at dinner;
try to recreate it in the mirror
when alone -
checking to see if they
could’ve seen through it.

I’ve seen the future,

it looks a lot like this.

Your eyes, full of old fights

we never had, but should have.

We carry on, hands full of silence.

Can I tell you a secret?

Sometimes my jaw hurts from
Smiling
So much.

The room is filled with voices, the din
Of a kitchen in the back of an echo chamber
And none of them know the way I ache
Because all I do is
Smile.

They don’t know—
They don’t know that I go home
Exhausted
From this constant, grand performance.

They do not know I am a liar.

I touch the fingers of the girl in the
Glass as I wash off the makeup and
Study the acne scars underneath.