I’d cut you out
Toss you to the starving wolves
Let them pick apart your lumbering mass
But even under your mask
You’re insignificant at best.

Leave you to your own
Let you fester despite your growth
Because no matter what you do,
In eyes that stare back at you
In all that you stir and stew
With propaganda songs,
And protesting vigils;
Assembly halls full of sycophants.
When the lights go out,
You’re all alone.

No you see the truth is:

All that you are,
And could ever be,
Is benign.

Stubborn steeled reserve
Grit stone and colder than an ice storm
It’s taken all these fine lines
To curve you into shapes
Tracing fingers along the surface of a smooth face

You keep with your attrition
Battle me for eons
Trample our traditions
But I’ll keep my hands hewing at your ramparts
Until I can see your soul flowing like a river
And who would dare tear your heart from me
If you had the axe, my love, would you hew into me?

Stubborn, but you’re folding
Like a bad hand at the table.
I’ll wager myself for your honor
If you could bluff me with your silence,
Knowing inside there’s a violence
Magma rising to the surface,
And cursing through your words shipped
Erupting from your tempest temper

Is that hard to see?
That these carpenter hands
Bend to the curve of your structure
To make art of your luster,
A statue maker worshipping Athena
Now hew like a great oak
Let me fall away,
Tell me that I’m nothing
When you’re weeping in a steadfast free-fall.

My dorm room was bright this morning. It was disorienting.
The sky outside was a cloudless, striking neon blue.
The air was so crisp and clean, I could hardly feel it going in and out.
It all sparked to create a diffused sense of well-being.

Gone, it seems, were the concrete bunker feels of winter.

There's been some loose talk of ‘spring’ lately—I thought it was fake news—but from my third floor lattice windows I could see what looked like people outside. They were walking in the sunshine, riding bikes, throwing frisbees, kicking ​​hacky sacks, a couple was making out in the grass—it was a riot of activity.

Sunny skiffed out of her room (which looks like a hotel room trashed by some rock star), she seemed lighter than air. Three days ago, she announced there was someone of “particular personal significance,” in her life (translate: girlfriend).
Start the schmaltzy, string-drenched soundtrack—love is in the air.

Our challenge now is to carve out a poised and measured final act to our undergraduate years. There’s a scurrying, cynosure, beehive, hyperfocus to labs and classes, a heightened, almost cinematic quality, as if, up to now, we’ve only been practicing for some undefined ‘real thing.’
.
.
Songs for this:
Daylight by Harry Styles
Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing by Michael McDonald
Dizzy (feat. Alfie Templeman & Thomas Headon) by chloe moriondo
.
.our cast: A reader once asked, “Who are these people?” (a solid question) So now I do a cast list.

Sunny, (suitemate) 21, a (pre-med) molecular, cellular, and developmental biology major, is a cowgirl from Nebraska (seriously, she has a quarter horse and barrel races). She’s an outspoken fem-facing ladies-lady.

Your author, a simple, multinational, upper-crust, trust-fund baby from Athens, Georgia who's also a molecular biophysics and biochemistry major (pre-med).

I looked at death, my old friend,
My companion and guide to the end.  
A glare he passed, a query to send—  
"What if, one more day, your life I extend?"

"What could you achieve,
With the boon you receive?  
Or would you perceive it a curse—  
One more day to wander the earth?"  

What could I do?  
With time so few.  
Whom would I run to?  
Whose presence would ring true?  

Or shall I not go?  
Run, hide—silhouette in shadow?  
Then whose darkness would I reside in,  
Who would turn the death's tide in?  

You tell me to see,  
To live, love, and like a bird—flee.  
In 24 hours—"What could anyone ever be!?"
A lie, to those who truly see.  

My friend, listen to what I say.  
No closure could be found in one day.  
Don’t mock my answer—this is my way.  
Forget hours, even 24 years wouldn’t be enough to  Seize The Day!

Your time is now over.
Your death will be slow,
and cruel.
A vulture picks
at the corpse of a fool.

When greed is worshipped,
all compassion fails.
Dogs eat dogs
and chase their own tails.

No one reads books.
No one understands law.
Might becomes right
and all succumb to their deepest flaw.

**** is entertainment,
and fantasy, addiction.
Degradation is beauty,
and cruelty, conviction.

The sun is now setting
on the city dying
Darkness begins
under a red moon rising

Amidst the daisies,
all I could see,
was you.

Just us alone,
beneath blue sky.

You beside me, eyes closed,
wind tracing its fingers
through your hair,
bathed in sunlight,
your soft smile lingering.

Oh, how I envy them—
for giving you a peace
I can only dream of.

Night Red and blue neon
All that I know
I bled for this.

Drug dealer avenues
****** blvd
Watching the night life illuminate
Like bioluminescence.

Predators to prey
A missing person a day
****** in every crack in the sidewalk

Day after day
Night after night
Watching the worst use the streets for play

******* snow angels
**** addled tremors
Narcan for the homeless

This is not cinema
This is middle America
When the stars all shine
The creatures make their move