Crowd of people suffocates me,
Chokes my throat and I can't utter
All I see is smiling faces;
Laughters and echoes are all I hear
But they fail to see my existence,
As if I'm not present there
Nor can I make a sound,
Unable to be found
Trying so hard to over come this struggle;
I cry with silent tears

This is the place I’m supposed to call home
Then why do I feel so foreign here?
Like a first time tourist lost within a country where no one speaks English


Yet, at the same time
I see the same faces
the same places
The menu at the diner around the corner never changes
The streetlights come on at the same time each day without fail,
except for that one down the street that’s been out since before I can remember
Never changing, always stagnant
Like an iPod stuck repeating the same bubblegum,
boy band
pop song from 2004


And I feel my stomach turn
my face turns green
my temperature rises
I am sick
of this place
I am tired
of this place
I am sick and tired of whitewashed, backwards thinking of “I’ll take care of myself -
***** anybody else.”
Because this might be a town
but it is anything but a community


And one day
hopefully soon
I will escape the invisible bars that trace the outline of this town
that are continually getting smaller and smaller
as my dreams become bigger and bigger


I can no longer breathe

I feel like I am suffocating
There is a small hole
A tunnel to my memory
A place that is not empty
Some place where my breath takes me
A tunnel with no air at the end
But things I remember
Things I always will see
Eyes shut with mouth
I don't breathe here
I just see
Observe
Recall
Cry
There is no more but black now
Nothing but fear and paranoia
Speechless and despondent
I can't breathe;

When I was younger, I had asthma.
I remember that suffocating feeling.
The panic, anxiety, nervousness striking my system all at once.
I never wanted to feel that again.

Fast-forward 20 years later, you came along.
The overwhelming feeling of asthma has come back.
I can't breathe.
You are asphyxiating me.
Yet, I find excuses, inhalers, to tolerate you...to keep you near.

Is it worth filling my lungs with chemicals just so that they can expand and contract?

Everyone is smiling
And they aren't happy
They're laughing
At nothing
And I'm just so tired
Can you please just stop lying
You aren't happy
It wasn't funny
And now you're so mad
At me
Because I peeled off your mask.
My heart is pounding
And I'm shaking
But I'm not suffocating

I'm done
I give up
Whatever happens
Happens
And it's tough

Let nature
Take its course
With me
Let life
Have its way
With me

If I fall
I fall
I will not
Get up

I'll crawl
Inside the dirt
Because that is my
Self worth

I'll ignore
My ailments
And let them
Catch up to me
As nature
And life
Take their toll
On me

My body
My flesh
Will decay
And turn
To dust
And I'll just
Sit there
and rust
Because I've been pushed
Across my line
The line on if I choose
Between death and life
The thing that makes me know
Wrong from right

I'll throw it all away
In time
Like a game,
I will wait
for it to catch up
To me

And when it does
I'll greet fate
With a grin
And let it take
My soul and sin

I saw you walk away from me, your eyes like burnt pastries
Tasteless was your gaze and tainted was your smirk.
I saw the last of your silk locks, saving themselves from my satin ruffles.
Useless was the lingerie I'd run my fingers through when you'd lean closer.
You told me my smile was the sun, yet you left in your spacecraft
Flirting with the stars, you left my glowing figure in a mist veil of polluted smoke.
You said I would drown in each lingering kisses, deep in a sea promised to never dry up.
You held me down with your addicting anchor; tempting was your touch and hopeful was your blush.

I saw you walk away,
Tasteless;
Tainted;
Useless;
Refugee;
Polluted;
Suffocating;
Add­icting;
Hopeful.

I love you.

This inexplicable sadness. This sadness rooting from deep down below. This sadness urging me to finally write. This hollow, crazy sadness. I cannot control it. It's sprouting from within, the shrubs thorny and harsh, it's hurting me all the way. It's hurting me all the way, it's hurting me so much.

I don't know what to do with it. Do I hold this baby and cradle it in my arms, do I push it to my chest tightly and suffocate it? It is suffocating me. It is suffocating me, I don't know what to do with it.

Do I throw it away? But it's throwing me away faster, it's cutting off my strings, it's wounding, stabbing, slashing THASH THASH THASH.

This inexplicable sadness that is hurting me so much -- what do I do with it?