I don’t have a license to drive anyone crazy — but I do have a mind
that keeps itself driven. Always on. Dreams at any given. And
I’ve felt the kind of love sickness that lingers too long — where
obsession is the disease of craving for something that was never really
yours to begin with. Envy stays green, growing tall like something
proud. But even weeds grow healthy, and we still call them plants,
right?

I’ve been tied to other people’s hopes — roped in by their strong
faith. "And I still try to believe." But saying that out loud feels like lying
to my own mouth. So I daydream in the interest of peace, trying not
to wake the ghouls I’ve tucked under my thoughts. I’ve had people
toss my advice like a smooth stone in their hand; pretending it’s
weightless, like their hands aren’t made of sand — like shallowness
could ever carry any real depth. But it just echoes the sea.

I always notice the ones who aren’t really seen. The unread...
The Blue and Grey ticks. While others get their messages read and
ignored, I’m just the message never opened. Still typing, still thinking
of the right words. I’ve come to represent the depressed, the lost, the young — the ones really trying to figure this **** out.

Pause yourself if you need to cuss, but I swear it’s not a curse to feel
like **** sometimes. It just means in that moment, you’re not feeling so clean. Not broken — just not fitting the costume.

Sometimes you just need one reason — just one — to feel like
yourself again. Not a version of you tailored to fit in. And that’s why
it suits me better not to force anything. So yeah, I wear shorts to
church — because life is too short, and I don’t see the point in
dressing up pain to make it feel prettier. Especially when it’s always
some casual man speaking formal hopes, trying to iron your sadness
into something presentable. As if comfort should only come with a
collar.

But I’m not here for that. I’m just here trying to feel real —
and maybe make peace with the parts of me that still feel unseen.

In a brief squeeze, my chest wheezed—
there goes my heart, falling out of itself,
into another rhyme, into another line.
Queue me up for feeling less than myself,
lost in being so lost.

Letting go of old grievances just to make
room for new ones today.
“I’m not okay”—
but I won’t say it, because you MAYBE
won’t think of me the same.

Sometimes I’m determined, other times,
indulgent. I look like I’ve got it together,
but beneath the surface,
I’m exhausted—
completely out of order.
Struggling. Sweating.
But short on words to explain what’s wrong.

I’d be seen as too much for speaking my
pain aloud— but pain is always louder
when it’s silent.

So I speak now for those who are just like
I am.
We are We:
navigating identity crises in these
stretched-out teen years of our twenties.
We are plenty— and still enough to
surround each other in love that counts,
instead of letting life count us down
or count us out. We will rise. Together.