When I was younger,
I'd change the station,
At the first sign of an Olivia Rodrigo song.

When I was younger,
I never knew the toll someone could take on you,
The way they could change you,
In a way nobody seems to understand.

Now that I'm here,
Listening to every single Olivia song,
I understand the things a person taken by love will do.
Now that I'm here,
I know what it's like to wreck your life,
For the hope you'll get something back.

At times I still want to take it back,
Fold into your arms,
Defeated, but loved.
At times I hate myself,
For latching onto your memory.
That I let you hog a part of me,
Can you please go away?

It's rotten work
It is for me
If it's me

It's rotten work
To get up in the morning
To keep breathing

It's rotten work
To make coffee
And drink water

It's rotten work
To eat when I'm not hungry
And get dressed every day

It's rotten work
It is to me
If it's me

It's rotten work
To go to work
To pay my bills

It's rotten work
To fake normalcy
And mask whatever the hell this is

It's rotten work
To not just sleep
Sleep and sleep and sleep

It's rotten work
It is for me
If it's me

It's rotten work
To drive each day
And not off the highway

It's rotten work
To be alive
And keep caring for myself–or trying to

It's rotten work
Because all I want to do
Is not talk, not eat, not drink

Just...sleep.

I’ve seen her once in shattered dreams,
A flicker drowned in silent screams.
She passed me by—untouched, unknown,
Yet carved her name into my bone.

She never looked, she never saw
The way her absence split my jaw.
I stitched her face from scraps of air,
And filled the gaps with quiet prayer.

She was never mine—
Not even close.
But something in her
Felt like home.

I don’t know her,
Not the way I need.
But still she haunts
My every plead.

She walks through me in every crowd,
Too bright, too soft, too far, too loud.
I memorized the way she breathes
Though she’s never even spoken to me.

I’ve built a shrine from passing glances,
A temple forged from phantom chances.
One smile and I’d lose my mind—
But she keeps her gaze,
And leaves me blind.

If she knew—
Would she run?
Would she scream?
Would she come undone?

She isn’t mine.
She never will be.
But still I wait
Where no one sees me.

I never touched her...
But some nights,
I still wake up
smelling her on my hands.
Her lips still burn on my neck.

She breathes through the cracks in me.
She dances in static and screen glow.
She’s never come home—
but I never let her go.

i am in love with the fruit just out of my reach
and though i could wait for it to fall
i know it would be rotten by then

i’ve had visions of our romance; in night, in sleep
holding the secret of our memories in my mind
but they’re all visions, not mine to keep

they’re all trying to tear us apart
he’s trying to convince you to leave
all because i said he couldn’t take my purity

and that wildcat started rumors about me
he made up things i said
so you would view me badly

but please, my starlight, don’t stop shining
though i know you’ll leave eventually
just not right now

he is pouring water on your dimming fire
he is your favorite tree, but
that branch is lifting you higher

another wasted battlefield.
ground smoking,
haze-choked.
bright afternoon zenith
crowning the only victor—
war.

sunlight skates
across the maze of bodies,
dried blood,
dreams ripped open like unsent letters.
it glints from the angle of death
and dances a shuffle
to music from a silent plane.

what am I to you
now that the wind
carries this stench?

a promise wrapped in vengeance.
a rotten kiss
pressed to your lips
passed down the bloodline.

the crowd roars with laughter.
ghosts foot the bill.

the water table rises
to meet the candle flame—
a younger sibling
finally getting their growth spurt.

I am weightless in the flooding,
drowning in fire,
burning in the afterglow
of a thousand dying engines
cooling to the rhythm
of hell-soaked hearts
spent on passion.

I am you
in the longest shadow
of the face you hide.

I am the violence of survival
strutting its stuff,
proud as the blood-soaked mane
of a lion.

I am the beast
that preys.

ahh,  men.

i was born and on fire. my skin, open flesh wounds that bled onto anyone in a close vicinity. my face, a cloud of black dust. i knew that i had love in my heart to share with the world, but no one could see past the mold on my skin that would spread to them if they got too close. i was born into two things: a fruit that appeared ripe on the outside but leaked out a decayed, rotten mess, and the hands that opened said fruit with blood that held on. i watch the destruction i've made, that i didn't mean to make, but i believed that it was justified. i wait for someone to understand these words, not to pity me, but to find a part of themselves in me. i have found nobody. i fear that as of now, i am a walking, moldy model of decaying flesh and raw meat. i did not want to be this way. i did not want to be the black sheep. i did not want to be bad. i am a sculpture of wet clay that they could mold with their pure hands, and despite all that creativity in their alive and well minds, they have carved the word "rotten" in my flesh.

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I beg you teach me how to laugh alive.
It seems as if I've tightly forgotten.
But, please, only no sadness for the past.
All that I had before, is left out and rotten.

I beg you teach me to believe in miracles.
It seems as if I've wholly got stale.
But, please, only no fairy-tales and quodlibets.
You make them up so poorly and fail.

I beg you teach me not to cry by no means.
My tantrums are being not much help at all.
Yes, I'm a girl, and we're not forbidden.
But it's in vain. I've checked it all in whole.

I beg you teach me how to get old steadily.
I realize that it's about my time.
I promise not to argue or resist noway.
My life was generous to me just anytime.

If this's the case, I will continue moving.
My feet will lisp along the ground bit by bit.
And when I have no force at all to trudge behind,
I'll simply sit under the pine and hug my knees.

I feel how I believe an apple with worms must feel. I am aware of my desire to ripen and be eaten, and I am also aware of the *****, crawling creatures inside of me. I will be cut open, and they will see the dirt brown rotting of my core. It is a tragedy that I could've been like those sweet, red apples, and it is a tragedy that I never could've been like them as well.

I’ll tell you a story, one you’ve forgotten.
About an apple tree with roots that are rotten.
This tree made apples, deformed, not round.
Spoiled and smelling, they fell to the ground.
Near to the tree, they seemed far from useful.
No creature would eat them to make themselves full.
But these apple seeds were untouched, unspoiled.
By removing the rot, in water that boiled,
The farmer could purify these seeds,
Use them for his needs,
Even though they were rotten.
Don’t let this story be forgotten.