I’m burning the candle
But not at both ends
No, for in fact I have five
I’m like an old star
Ready to explode
Plain sick of being alive
Helping her and helping him
Ignoring myself for the sake of them
Some days I wonder
“Will I ever be true?”
When that day comes
Boy, will that feeling be new
It starts in my toes
Weary from walking
Igniting my fingers
Busy writing and talking
Then it gets to my head
As it makes its way down
Warming my heart
Burning my frown
I’m not saying that I want to die
But I’m spread so thin
I think “why shouldn’t I”

im a
rowdy
unforgiving
loud
angst filled teen

i'm going to do whatever i want
sounds awful
but

sorry dad
love you mom

you love me less and less each day
hopefully
once i've come home from a party
smelling like *****
and a boys cologne
it will be enough for you to give up on me

I spring awake at four a.m.
Inscitvely clutching my phone to check on this kid’s petition
“End the G.S.A.”
The stress eats away at my sleep schedule
As kids use one misunderstanding to take away my heart and soul
A club I have inputted so much of myself into
And funny enough “Vic” has three letters too
I can’t sleep without their 300 signatures popping up behind my eyelids
Comments being recited in the most repressed part of my insecurities
300 people who are against one of the clubs that saved me
Saved my friends
Saved so many people
But there’s no room for a gay presence in Johnson County
I spring awake at four a.m.
Visions of the kid who keeps his gun in his car spring into my head
My chest feels open already
Have already bled out every ounce of pride in me
What more harm can this kid do?
Don’t they understand that by killing my spirit
They’ve already made storage container for their bullets?
I spring awake at four a.m.
Because I do not let myself feel any other time
Must stay strong to show that I am bigger than their hatred
That I will go on
So I refuse to let myself accept that ever-consuming fear that grows in my stomach
It’s just indigestion
Just me being another overdramatic queer kid
Just everyday life that I must adjust to anyways
I haven’t let myself feel since the incident occurred
And the reactions poured in
Drowning any sense of safety I used to feel
I am choking on their unadulterated bigotry
Gasping for air amongst the abundance of hatred
And I’m not sure if I’ll ever breathe right again
I spring awake at 4 a.m.
Because I guess it’s the only time I feel safe anymore.
School is a warzone for people like me
And I can't hide in the crowd so easily
When it's 1v300
So I'm desperately trying to hide behind my poetry
I spring awake at 4 a.m.
Because I don't know if my coping is working.

Welcome to High School where...


You will be bullied and made fun of.

You will be judged on you appearance.

You will see a lot of people who you don't want to see.

You will constantly be bombarded with drama and anxiety.  

You will worry about things you shouldn't be worrying about.

You probably won't love most of those around you.  

You will stay up all night studying for a test that you will fail anyway.

You will get into fights and learn painful lessons.

You will spend most of the day wishing you were somewhere else.

You will waste seven valuable hours of your life everyday.

You will make plenty of enemies but probably not nearly enough
friends.
                                                               
 ­                                                     
           ­    


                              HAVE A NICE FOUR YEARS.

Tiles floors
As if an elaborate game of chess
Spiraled notebooks with lined paper
As if the bars on our collective prison cell
Mechanical pencils filled with lead
As if loaded weaponry to face war
Plastic chairs with metal screws
As if  the electric chair to melt our brains away
Teachers and their ungodly stare
As if guards keeping us complacent

They do it for the world, they say
They do it to prepare us for life, they say
They do it to help us grow and become smarter, they say
But that's not the whole truth, not in the slightest
They want to keep us in line
They want to keep us in place
They want to keep us silenced
They want to make us the perfect human
They want us to be perfect
We were supposed to be perfect
Perfect...

But we cant
We cant do what they want us to
We cant be their cookie cutter student
Never with straight As
Never with perfect manners
Never with perfect behavior
Never with their perfect emotions
Because we can't

But we can be our own person
With our own feelings
With our own emotions
With our own words
With our own personalized strengths and weaknesses
Because we can't be what they want
What humanity wants
But we can be human
We can be ourselves

And we will be
We will break and fall
And we will crumble to the sea of woes
But we shall rebuild our mighty kingdom
Out of tear drops and wooden blocks
And we will be human
We will be us

The person who I respect the most is the same person I pretend doesn’t exist when I see him walking towards me.

It’s not your fault
I have a million and one excuses why I don’t stop and bore you to tears
But not one of them could ever fix the fact that I never think of how you must feel when I do it
My insecurity turns talking to you into one of my biggest fears

Even though I say this now
I have a funny feeling I’ll do it again
And maybe you don’t even care
Or maybe you feel the same
All I know is that I don’t know

I feel like I’ve been a ******* sociopath my entire life and I’m just now realizing what emotions are
When I look back, I’ve always been selfish
My therapist said I had good reasons for that, but I never could except it
I used to be a wild child and even got thrown out of my fist daycare
Now I’m afraid people might reject me

When I look at you, I see pure confidence without ego
Yeah, maybe I’m a little jealous of you
But I’ll get there too
I think that’s why I’ve always been afraid to talk to you
I’ve felt inferior, and that’s not your fault

I tried to take some time to grow
But they say absence makes the heart grow fonder
And it did
And I started appreciating the time we had

Back then I felt like no one cared
Never realizing that I never cared for anyone else in return
It all makes sense now, but hindsight is 20/20

To me, passing by you is like passing by a celebrity
I don’t know what to do or say and I come up with 50 million reasons I should keep walking
This is so ******* stupid it’s its own level of *******, but I do it anyways.

If you managed to make it to the end of this, thank you so much. It means the world to me.