#softchaos
I wake up and the edges of myself feel thin, as if I might fray and drift away at any moment. The world is close and far at the same time, like I’m looking through a window smeared with yesterday’s fingerprints. I remember things and then forget them again, small moments slipping out of my hands before I even know they were mine. Faces arrive, familiar but distant, voices echoing like they belong to someone else, laughter sounding like a sound I once knew but can’t claim. Time moves around me in crooked lines, and I stumble through days that feel borrowed, trying to find solid ground in a mind that refuses to hold still. There are sparks that cut through the fog—a song, a smell, a fleeting thought—but they vanish before I can hold them, leaving only the memory of something I never fully touched. And through it all, I keep moving, keep breathing, pretending the gaps don’t exist, even as I feel myself split into fragments, chasing pieces I can’t name, lost in the weight of a body and mind that sometimes feel not entirely my own.
Nov 21, 2025
Nov 21, 2025 at 1:01 PM UTC
I brush my teeth like I’m getting ready for war.
Or I forget to for three days
until my canines are wearing sweaters.
Temu moisturizer like battle paint.
Who knows what’s in there.
Who cares.
Upside-down Claddagh on my ring finger like a threat.
And it might be.
I put my hair up like a woman with secrets—
on the days I brush it.
A bumpy bun the rest of the time.
I shed like a stripper.
I strip like a thief.
I walk out the garage door like I invented sorrow.
I get in my car
like every song from Reputation to Tortured Poets
was written for me.
I wave to strangers like I’m about to die.
Cross the street like it’s a choice.
Clock into work like I have a hit on my head.
I **** Elf Bars like they’ve got confessions inside,
and blow out like they won’t give me cancer—
because they can tell
I approach them with pure intentions
and a positive spirit.
I know how to make an exit
that feels like a funeral.
I know how to hold a coffee cup
like I’m accepting an award
no one else can see.
I take bites of dropped chocolate chip cookies
but spit them out before they ruin me.
I spend too long staring at my own reflection,
just to make sure I still exist.
I catalog new moles.
Curse the milia above my eyelids.
Buzz off my mustache.
Denounce my chin hairs.
I think thin.
Sometimes I blink
just to feel time move.
I keep novels in my bag like armor,
and a journal like a last will and testament.
The expensive pens from Amazon
that don’t crawl up my left hand
like a disease.
That don’t smudge the page
like I have something to hide.
I pay for Spotify.
Skip the songs that hurt.
Play the one that ruins me.
I cry on the train
like I’m filming something important.
Because I will be.
I want everything I feel
to mean something.
I want every single ache to echo.
I want my poems
reverberating in the minds of people
who are emotionally legendary.
I want the world to apologize
for not feeling it first.
Sometimes I walk
like I’m being watched
by everyone who’s ever left me.
Sometimes I smile
like I know something God doesn’t.
Sometimes I think I was born
just to document
what it means to be alive
in the most dramatic possible way.
Because I am the first girl
to ever feel anything.
Mar 28, 2025
Mar 28, 2025 at 9:16 AM UTC