Oversharing on your social feed
Everyone knows your wants and needs
Save for those who really care
To the rest of us you need not bear
Your lunch and dinner were had, we see
Relationship status updated several times a week
How can it be?
I remember a day we shared with ourselves
Worries and whims on paper with pen
In a book called a journal or diary
it would have been
Discreet it was then
As it should be again
I can't wait for the sharing to end.

the homeless are ******* in the streets,
well some of them are

the homeless have been ******* in the streets
a lot lately

when they are not getting scatological on the streets of seattle
they are conjuring the other images of themselves, because there is always so much more to this story
as they sit on the sidewalk and/or in entrances of shops, restaurants, and other commercial establishments
throwing empty beer cans in the street
at the people walking past

they say seattle is going to be the next san francisco
because that is what tech is, nothing new
forgotten already done ideas redone
same price tags same coast line same **** in the streets

they must have thought something better
was here, waiting for them
when they rode into town
from other towns
housing, more drugs, a new life
in these streets that they **** in

not sure what they heard
their tents under the over pass
their trash upon the hill
overlooking the highway

their tents always have a highway view
their trash too

i should be that afraid of my own life
of what tomorrow will be
oversharing in a voice
that is not my own
miss jean brodie in **** city style

I collect secrets
gathering them up like
a squirrel holds chestnuts in its cheeks
I hold them, in anticipation of
leaner times
that way, I will be
fine
fine
when winter arrives -
when I am left
alone

i have a very vivid memory of arguing
with my mother in the first grade on the eve of picture day.
i don’t remember what we were arguing about,
probably something about what i was supposed to wear,
but i remember telling her that sometimes i wished
i could just lay down in a coffin instead of doing this.
i know; brutal for a seven year old.
children are both somehow incredibly kind and incredibly callous.
i think i made my mother i cry, i don’t know i try not to remember.
if you want to get analytic, this could mean a lot of things.
i read a think piece recently about how millennials,
as a whole, have gallows humor.
most of us regularly joke about the impending collapse of society,
how to plan for retirement when your retirement
will most likely be the apocalypse,
how global warming can’t **** us if nuclear warfare does first.
we are nihilism and absurdism’s ugly red-headed step-children.
gallows humor is most common among soldiers.
the article wondered about what it says about the world we live in
that entire generation is under a comparable amount of stress.
and even though i’m an atheist, it’s difficult for me to think
of death as sharp as it is. as finite.
i don’t believe in an afterlife, of heaven and hell,
but maybe i don’t really believe in endings, either.
i still think about death like it’s sleep, hitting snooze,
pressing pause.
when i was 16, i hated holden caulfield
because he reminded me too much of myself.
we did this in class activity where we had to diagnose him
with depression and i wanted to claw my heart out
of my throat the whole time.
my sophomore year of highschool it seemed like half of my class
gave themselves stick and pokes, homemade DIY tattoos
out of india ink and mom’s sewing needles
etched dot by dot into their skin. can you blame us?
we all wanted to be something permanent.
my sophomore year of highschool, someone tried to commit suicide
in the bathroom during class and we didn’t talk about it.
we never talked about it. whenever people die,
i don’t know how to talk about it.
my hands are too cold to touch god
and so i keep writing, trying to generate heat.
i had a professor who told me that no matter what we write about
we come back to the same things —
we write about our obsessions. we write about ourselves.
we write about what feels closest to our hearts
or, maybe, what feels farthest away.
see, there are times when my life feels like it’s
happening to someone else.
if it wasn’t for poetry i think i’d be dead.
i don’t tell my mom that, please don’t tell my mom that.
it makes it sound like i have a problem,
i don’t wanna have any problems. she’s got enough problems.
sometimes i don't wanna be here, sometimes i don’t wanna be here.
i don’t know where here is.
sometimes i’m worried that here is everywhere,
that here keeps changing and following me and wearing down
new places to their bones.
but maybe this is human nature.
we feel like we’re not supposed to be here so we try to delete
ourselves from here or we try to delete here,
keep digging into there’s nothing left.

Sleep deprivation

***

Guilt

Sense-making and maps of meaning

Revisiting memories

Crying

Staying away from scary corners of my mind

Deliberately going toward scariness

Not resisting

Yes resisting

Respecting resistance

Compulsive tv watching

Dropping or letting go over and over again

Exploring

Curiosity

Forgetting and then remembering that it’s all happening on its own, noticing this, knowing this, realizing this

Realizing that realization comes and goes on its own

Being in love with everything

Crying

Playing with time and concepts

Craving emptiness

Love

Catastrophizing

Ranking what "works" (i.e. sleep deprivation is effective), noticing that the metric of “effective” and "works" is = resulting in greater illusions of "forgetting" with a capital F

Loving everything

Being everything

Self-flagellation

Not really believing any of the stories or narratives

Procrastinating

Being irresponsible

Getting off on self-loathing

Forcing intimacy

Compassion, large, whole, unrelenting, everywhere

Oversharing

Falling in love with a homeless person at a traffic stop

Being bored and sad and hopeless and desperate

Remembering inherent wholeness

Being stubborn

Getting out of the way always feels like dying

Loving dying

Loving mourning dying

Dramatizing dying

Wanting to be seen and loved

Self-loathing

Intensity

Craving intensity

Hating craving intensity

Knowing that nothing is a problem

Suffering

Being impatient

Being very very patient

Feeling like I don’t belong in the world, like people and things and money and social media are alien, foreign and scary

Feeling like I am the world

Forgetting that knowing how to verbalize isn’t the same as knowing

Wanting knowing with words to be the same as Knowing

Wanting knowing to be a Real, solid thing

Fear

Mortal fear

Bewilderment

Constant background anxiety

Hating this body

Not caring for this body

Being burdened by this body

Feeling trapped in a body

Feeling more trapped in a mind

Wanting knowing to resolve everything

Wanting to be saved

Thinking that I probably don’t need to be saved

Thinking or knowing(?) there’s nothing to be saved from

Knowing that I can’t be saved

Feeling open

Feeling vulnerable

Feeling exposed

Feeling bad

Feeling like I'm doing it wrong

Believing it all

Wanting to both believe it and have a choice about when, where, and to what extent I believe it

Not knowing where the edge is until I've fallen off

Feeling violated

Feeling like existence is non-consensual

Somehow trusting all of it, totally, exactly as it is

Watching the panicking

More crying

Being one

Being very very aware

Noticing and letting go of effort in one swift move

Compulsive clenching

Compassion

Dissolving

Disillusion

Dying without the novelty

Being ok vey very briefly and for no apparent reason/because of no reason./?

Wanting distraction

Respecting needing distraction

Getting out of the way of intelligent coping mechanisms

Villifying coping mechanisms

Understanding only in retrospect

Frustration

Compassion, deep, like warm water

Compassion, hard, like being ****** vey very slowly

Torture

Life-giving torture

Never wanting to stop

Marveling

Abundance like grace, like not deserving, like not needing to be deserving, like deserving is perverse language

Tasting everything

Endless kaleidoscopes of being and tasting and knowing

Non visual seeing

Clarity, brightness, nothing is a problem

Being alive

Being sososo tired

Wanting to rest, to die into void and nothing

Wanting to hibernate

Wanting to still

Dying to get off

Begging to get off

Finding the edge more thrilling than the center (because then the center can be anything at all?)

Loving all the previous versions of this being

Needing to hate, loathe, earlier renditions of this being

Hating repulsion

Trusting repulsion

Getting stuck because resisting repulsion

Knowing that there's no way out

Knowing that the way out that I'm seeking isn't a way out

Not wanting to do the work

Dancing around the center, constantly

Feeling dizzy with chaos, with knowledge of power

Feeling comfortable with mediocrity

Hating mediocrity

Waking up with jaw tension from the enormity of my own suppressed power

Telling stories about sensations

Relying on self-bullying methods I know don't work

Perfecting the art of pretending

Perfecting the art of self-deception

Wanting to make the stakes higher

Being overwhelmed by my own storytelling

Not wanting to give stories credibility by dispelling them

Naval gazing

Loving philosophy

Feeling dried up, tired, stagnant, disinterested, not engaged, not here.

Sleepwalking. Sleep writing. Sleep talking. Sleep caring

Not sleeping

Vivid dreaming

High weirdness

Questioning my sanity

Romanticizing insanity

Wanting to blur all boundaries

Wanting to smooth the edges of reality

Questioning reality

Destabilizing reality

Feeling destabilized

Feeling irresponsible

Guilt

Feeling sick and tired

Feeling scared

Feeling hopeless

Wanting to reach out

Feeling like everything is inevitable

Feeling like suffering is inevitable

Recognizing kindness

Discerning well (properly? Clearly? Well.)

Fearful trusting

Thinking too much

Not wanting to love my dad as much as I do.

Chasing the intellectual high

Disappointment

No need for resolution

Feeling caught in existence

Feeling caught up. Like in a potato sack; I can explore the exact measure of my confinement, the sensorial elements, the scratchiness, the filtering light from the outside, the stagnation, the wanting to stretch.

I love this being.

This. It's not a problem.

Confusing familiarity with comfort

Confusing comfort with peace

Reifying confusion, but not really

Yielding, on my knees, heart to the sky

Seeing through, like pinholes in a perfectly realistic backdrop

Dispelling everything

Stripping away the Stripping away

Trying to stand still and feel

Wanting to be convinced by rage

Always loving Sad, not despondent, just sad

Feeling continuous

Feeling fragmented

Feeling like motion, like flow

Feeling like thousands of still frames, constant flickering

Grasping at impermanence

Resting in the middle

Dancing down the tightrope

Knowing perfect poise, so so brief

Everything is hysterically funny

Hysterically

But also just plain humorous

And absurd

Loving people

Feeling grateful for people

Seeing beauty everywhere

Always coming back

Like an epic

Like a great love story

Like a violin solo in a forbidden song

Like the last wring of that silk dress you're not supposed to squeeze dry

Knowing the inside of my hand

Knowing teenage shame

Knowing being yelled at, towered over, by my dad, in a narrow
hallway, eyes glued to speckled floor tiles, feeling small, nowhere to go

Loving with my body, with my hands, with my mouth, with my whole entire strong soft body

Crying with tears, and snot, and heaving

Becoming one single, concentrated point

Wanting to envelope everything. Really. Actually. With my body.

I am not this voice

Or this writer

Or this narrator

Though I am also all that

A wise old man said
love comes in many forms.
It's more than meets the eye.
They died in the name of love,
to search for the meaning,
to love,
to love deeply,
to love faithfully.

It takes 21 years to finally learn what love is.
Love is,
having the courage to start over.
Love is,
something that keeps knocking your door up even though you've been hurt, drowned by love.
Love is,
trying to reach out after you've been assaulted.
Love is,
forgiveness to yourself when you know it is not your fault.
Love is,
clean and pure.

I also learn that love
is when my friends skipped a class for me when I need a shoulder to cry on.
Is when she didn't mind being in her office late during our lunch conversation.
Is when my friends took care of me when my tummy hurts like hell during our road trip.
Is when my friend let me sleep on his shoulder even though I'd broken his heart.
Is when my friend was still answering my phone when they knew I have chosen the wrong guy three years ago.
Is when not complaining while giving me a ride home.
Is when they are up for a 2 a.m confession.
Is when having bakso together til our tummy exploded.
Is when they made me laugh while I was crying.
Is when he gave me books for my birthday present, in a blue box wrapped with yellow paper.
Is when our cheeks and tummy hurt after some bad jokes.
Is when they gave some warm hugs.
Is when they knew that I sometimes made bad choices and chose to give me a harsh-slap truth but still stood by my side.

And since last summer,
Love loves to sing me songs with his guitar, from Nat King Cole's to Stevie Wonder's to John Mayer's.
Love introduces me to his cousins.
Love knows that I love soy latte, yoga, and swimming.
Love is being trusted by Bunda dan Ayah.
Love drives miles to see me back and forth.
Love loves to make me fat when I'm sick.
Love is hanging out with my sister and treating her like his younger sister.
Love is getting along with your best friends.
Love knows why I always choose warm mineral water to drink.
Love lets me sleep when he is driving.
Love hugs me tightly and kisses my forehead.
Love teaches me to learn how to bike.
Love doesn't complain when he sees me during sick days, no bath days.
Love says sorry and means it.
Love is not oversharing on social media, but really living it up.
Love understands when I took time for myself.
Love is accompanying me to the libraries even though he doesn't like books as much as I do.
Love knows I always get sleepy because of lack of it or it is because I take some meds.
Love tells me that everything would be okay, and said he'll be there.
Love also makes mistakes.
But I learn that love
does not always have to be hurt all the time.
Love is not letting me cry myself to sleep.
Love is solving problems before I go to sleep.
Love is not always helping me do the tasks,
but love encourages me to make me believe that I can do it, go to New York City, and live up to my dream.
Love is growing together side by side.

But the most precious parts are,
love is giving me a ride to school since middle school.
Love offers me to take sessions with a therapist.
Love inspires me.
Love cooks masakan padang really good.
Love obsessed with cleanliness.
Love is learning to apologize when they made mistakes even though they are way older than I am.
Love gives me the harsh truth about the real world is messy, but it is okay to start over.
Love hugs me tightly after a month of not seeing each other.
Love is throwing bad jokes.
Love is singing in the car and doesn't care if it's terrible.
Love is loving me unconditionally for 21 years.
Love is loving me patiently.
Love is loving me faithfully.

i remember someone on this site a long time ago.
they would write unrelenting epic poems that
always made my fingertips tingle in that way
they do when you're surprised art made you
feel something again, you know?

i arrive back here tonight because i've been
doing a whole lotta feeling and far too little art
and i've stopped letting it surprise me.

i keep oversharing when people ask, "how are you?"

i keep wondering who i'm supposed to be at this point on this long path of becoming. i don't know, i've never liked the phrasing but it resounds so cleverly from forebrain to nervous system it's uncanny and unavoidable and ineffable. who am i am i am i am i am i ...

i want to make a map,
a cartography of memory,
charting the granite and
soil, marrow and moss,
river foam, abusers,
flower gardens, wild blackberries --
the purple dabbed away from those
soft parts that blackberries might stain

to wash deep berry blood off
in the public pool bathroom
where she first made you a novelty

to scrape darker
from under his fingernails
with bark from the tree she
made you hide behind

the same park you grew up in

a spot you always caught the sunset
a spot he caught you and the sun seemed always then to set

still haven't gone back

it's time to make a map

oversharing
undercaring
people staring
lights glaring

The expectation,
Of you to accept the inhalation,
Of the evaporation,
Of someone else’s waste.

Make it make sense,
How the walls of stalls,
Fail to reach its maximum highs and lows,
For all of us to share what we release.

We listen to the air,
That flubs between *** cheeks,
Just as the **** projects deuces,
Into the bowl that cups the sound of wind.

We hear the moans and sighs,
Of relief, constipation and strain,
As we urinate nearby,
Adjacent to the incomplete **** shack.

Make it make sense,
How tasting the gases,
Of Joe Blow, blowing out his insides,
Is a customary to our community.

A sociological experiment,
Deemed to generate sociopathy,
As we laugh at the flatulence,
And giggle at one’s vulnerability.

Merely a forgotten fact,
That we have been there too,
We go there every day,
And pretend that others don’t do the same.

And without a mere act of courtesy,
The space is left filthier than the last,
Because why be considerate for the next?
Someone’s job is to cleanse my waste.

Furthermore is the neglect,
Of faucets, soap and towels,
Aimed to **** bacteria,
That exits biological passageways.

Why oh why,
Must I be forced to study,
Why this is simply unacceptable,
This concept of oversharing?

Recurring stage fright,
Readily apparent,
When forced to **** beside men,
More than double my size.

I’ll simply never understand,
How by design,
What we wouldn’t do in front of house guests,
Is something we are urged to do in front of strangers.

Bonding,
With a bunch of hairy, overweight men,
Who clear their throats, bladders and colons,
In my personal space.

I'm overbearing,
Always oversharing.
Too much caring
So cease
The beast
Inside
That feasts
And preys
On my heart
With every defeat.

A solemn inferno is crafted, and not shortly after
My bones are chapped, my blood shaking, my organs cracking;
Have I got it wrong? I laugh.
I follow the path of the pointed droppings from the trees
The crunch at my feet, how cliché! I hesitate.
The chill slips away in the night, and the fire
Wraps around our hands – like gloves – a perfect fit.
Life is too grim to live without a flame
I never want to face a season without this.
I have seen the moon dance and decline;
Seen it
Finish its routine.
I applaud.

Start again.
Again, again, again,

Huddled around my ball of light, bonding;
Oversharing. I cry.
When I was still able to count my age on my fingers,
This sun could never come undone;
I never imagined her ******* her soul for me,
slowly, like a neatly wrapped present on Christmas morning;
I never imagined learning how to burn my memories.

I can finally let you go.

Your kisses never showed me this admiration
But I wish you well. I sigh.
I will see you again, in the candlelight –
Only an imitation of the evenings
where the fireflies would tuck me into bed
and the stars would tell me a story.
Goodnight, good riddance. I lie.

What if we kissed while I get 5150’d?
POV: I just met you
You’re in the dayroom oversharing me your
Sketchbook of celestial imagery
Running your fingers through my hair
Translating Le Petit Prince en Français
As you hold the English version-

Holding my head in your lap
I’m the womb in the wounds in your wrists
Filling the void
In your arms
where You just lost your baby;

beat into me until i'm broken and the feelings
alight the layer of skin just below the outermost,
like the lining of a jacket, catching aflame.

scratch out the remaining worries with the spines of your teeth.
rake me upwards, shred the doubts like old sunburn peel, and peel and peel the layers of mistrust off of me till i'm raw, pink and ready.

never has this body not been scarred
without first feeling excitement.

since you pierced it, now you're responsible. I'll chase that ownership, mutually owed, to the end of all meaning. till the sensations are the only bits that still make sense, and then you can make up for everything else.

only after this, after everything else is spread across a blood splattered floor, can things start again. only once you make up for not returning the parts of me. only once my remaining organs, now calcified, have been cracked to their inner ichor, and you tip me gently into your thankless lungs.

only once the prostration, the words left since butchered into me, have been flayed by your regret, and raised to the height of saints.

hang me up.
swing by my legs and wrap around the root of me like you once would.
debase yourself inside of me again, learn to build something again. dig deeper than needed again, strike copper in my veins so I can oxidise again. watch me alight again, at your briefest touch.

Feel like I went
somewhere wrong
People look but
they don't hold on
And I so crave
for interaction
For a poetic
intersection
I can't
stop writing
It's reverse writer's block
that I'm fighting
When all I can do
is oversharing
the pressure in my head
is overbearing

I know we are all
most interested in ourselves
Standing tall
in front of our virtual bookshelves
Not much wrong with it
It's only human nature
we wait for our creations to be a hit
so we feel a little bit more mature

Our intentions must be
somewhat the same
Am I wrong in thinking that we all
want a little bit of fame
Maybe the word falls short to describe
I mean we all want to be seen
Make a small impact, "please subscribe"
Everyone wants to be part of the scene

Oh but "I don't care what I am",
that's not what I do
Ah but unfortunately
that's not even half true
I didn't care much when
I started out
Simply because
I wasn't so proud
Of being able to write
my most inner thoughts down
and still call them
my own
And I still don't feel
proud in comparison
All these beautiful souls on here
This lyrical ship has quite a strong garrison

But it makes me sad and I wonder
about some of you
and that's why I started to ponder
cause I have no clue
What does "a follow for a follow" mean
If that's all we do
what does it matter, why so keen

Do you think it's only fair
I follow you, you follow me
But I want you to really care
To click because you want to see
Silly little adventures that I share
and who I want to be

I still strive to feel connected
I read of you
til I'm feeling like everything's collected
Is it too much to ask to wish you'd too

Dearest Skye,

Hello.

We haven't spoken in a long time.

Forgive me. I isolate too much.

I've been sick. I'm still sick. I'm going to be sick for a while.

But that's okay. I have hope that it won't last forever. Eventually I'll find something that works. One day I'll leave this self-imposed quarantine.

I apologise. I'm oversharing again. You always told me I did that too much.

How have you been? Did you get that degree? Have you travelled to Japan like you said you would? Did you learn to play the drums?

Have you fixed your relationship with your parents? Did you finally forgive them? Have you kept in contact with your sisters? Your school friends?

And have you solidified your identity? It's hard. The hardest challenge I've ever faced. If I can't do it, you must. Or else you will be miserable for the rest of your life.

But you must not close yourself off like before. You don't have to hide your emotions. To master them, you have to let them consume you and then climb out of the abyss.

You're strong. You can do it. I believe in you.

Write back to me. Let me know if you're happy. I hope, for both of our sakes, that you are.

Sincerely,
Skye.

A pang in my chest
says don't pursue
him he'll be just
like the others
patting you on the head
and telling you who you are
until its bored into you.
You'll leave looking
for strangers
to surprise
someone
who doesn't know
your favorite wine
maybe he'll choose
something refreshing
that you don't like.
At least it will be
different, not the same
until he walks away
and it's over.
And you suddenly
miss having someone
who knew you that way -
so we'll.
oh well.
So you'll take some time
to stretch yourself
and then you'll be ok
and then you'll start looking
but find nothing and quickly
spiral into a depression
because no one wants
to know you like he did.
So you'll call him
and complain
about your lack of options,
feel guilty for oversharing
then send him
a naked pic for listening.
And the you'll go on
a date with someone 'great'
and then they'll disappoint you
because they seemed spontaneous
but aren't really or are
but don't have their **** together.
And then you'll...
**** I can't do it anymore.

you say my name
when I'm not around

oversharing, overbearing
don't act like you're so special
you're like everyone else

she's so nice
it's suspicious

I don't want to hear it
you're not my friend

keep my name
out of your mouth

Wish to be an unmoving mountain,
Snow clasped, untouched and cold.
A big lenticular cloud casting its shadow,
Over the peak, that has the view of a world.

I see myself failing to achieve this,
A curious mind is often a curse.
There's a little whisper and chatter,
Like a curious deer, I stick my antlers in

Someone has built a little dwelling,
I hear the stomp and the noise now.
As I watch,  don't wish to be bothered,
But stealthily I observe now.

Curious mind , Oh! it should explode,
If I don't tend to it now, so I must know,
Just a little peek , is all I want ,
Promise to tiptoe back safely.

I speak not, of the many misadventures,
That shaped my past and my being.
Intense reckonings that are a bit distasteful,
Remind me to stay away from the drama.

A peek is all it takes, the stranger knows now,
Let's get acquainted , they say to me.
I shake my head in a 'yes' reluctantly,
Oh curiosity! you have me in your grasp again!

Little by little, it seeps into your mind,
As curiosity and desire go hand in hand,
Just a tiny bit , I should know  their story,
What makes them , the way they are.

I invite them, into my own dwelling now.
Show them this minds artful creation,
Stories for stories in exchange,
From acquaintance to friends now.

Curiosity flows like the river now,
Washing away the sands of time,
Missing those cues to stop now,
Oversharing and sharing secrets.

They Talk, I talk , a little more everytime,
The never ending stories of times past.
Some more of the present now,
It seems, I put my trust in them.

I know their secrets but do I dare?
They know mine, and yes they can tell,
My failures, vulnerabilities and fears,
All's an open book for their eyes.

A book they gladly share and overshare,
Till the rim bursts and the pages swell.
All my bruises known to all,
Who else to blame and names do I call.

Alas, I have been a fool again!
Drowning to the oceans depth,
Wished I be the unmoving mountain,
Even reaching it's base is now uncertain.

You've done the deed and is yours only,
To bear the fruit of your own desire,
Distasteful, bitter and cold,
I sit undone, forlorn burning in a pyre.

You don't need to tell them
That a ***** fell on the floor
Tell them to listen some music
To cover all the noise

You hold a cigarette at hand, you're a criminal
You hold a cigarette at hand, you're against society
You hold a cigarette at hand, you look like a poor darling
Better be cryptic than normal

Why the hotline isn't even free
And why is it only an hour long

The laws of the calling of nature are not helping

You and I use a lot of that
You can tell that I'm not validated as a child
If only I can kick a person's leg, then they won't show the bible to me
If only I can make a person throw up without seeing me
If only I can make a person feed their hand to the fire and burn there to see how it feels

How much of this is oversharing? How much of this is artistic?

I know not everything's my fault
Yet I feel bad I feel bad
when people apologize
The next fight or flight second move is to gaslight me
Trying to glue all the chinks together
Then wait for an hour for a jar to grow

I eat a sandwich of truffles
I don't think they're truffles at all
If only I can eat a paper of daycare rules just like I ate that sandwich
Did you know that sandwich I ate wasn't mine but yours?
Truffles I digest but don't remember how it taste
Meanwhile, a beggar jumps in joy for a dollar

I tried painting the Venus goddess herself once
It turns out that's the girl from The Ring
If she was only as pretty as the eyeliner of hot topic wednesday
We all know that old men love youthful wednesdays that dance dance on their lap until they die

Self-awareness isn't enough
A spoonful of sugar isn't enough
When you have checklists
When you have contests
When you whiten your teeth with coal
When you have a devil that wears prada
It's an illness, not a personality

You don't have to suffer
But this is my suffering

Just to hear a good tone, I'm baffled someone can play a guitar
Meanwhile, I can't manage my own emotions

There is no perfect decision.

But no one would believe in that guru's book of improvement
Only the end product
before I fake laugh.

Once in a while can I mosh pit singing the lyrics to my own concert?

I wish your love came without conditions
If I don't do everything you ask are you still going to love me
All those years you told me I was inferior
I found someone who told me I was enough
Oversharing on the internet with absolute strangers
Male validation is better than no validation right?
I wish you knew how much your words affected me

I crave attention
And all the things I don't get
I crave feeling
Like I belong where I am

I want
What I can't have
I need
Something or someone

I don't know
What I need
Less what I want
Or how to get it

I can't express
My feelings without
Feeling like I'm oversharing
Being in the way

I feel lost
Alone
I need
Someone or something

To give meaning
To make me feel
Wanted
To give me reason

At least vision
Of what I'm
Supposed to do
Next

i wish you could've seen me today.

i sat out in front of the library thumbing through old issues of food and wine

played miles hodges and zora howard in my ear

picked at leaves

and let the sprinkle of rain and tugging wind caress me

i stupidly imagined it was you gently patting my head instead.

my knees would attempt to give out in my walk around campus whenever your smile appeared in my thoughts

a grin widening from cheek to cheek

it creases your eyes and makes you look wise

older, i think.

also,

yesterday i said i wouldn't write any more love poems

and by God, i meant to have meant it

but what's a girl to do when you have a smile like that!

for now i read bits of my aldanov, cram accounting, shuffle from bed to the library, tutor, pray, and fast like a good girl.

no music, no friends, no sugar, no oversharing, and **** sure no boys.

i've been trying so long now to only care about the deen.

cocoon in the Qur'an, never miss or delay a prayer, never miss an opportunity to fast or do remembrance. and most of all don't desire!! especially something as silly as a boy from a different world, completely unmoved or disturbed at best by crazy ole ugly little me. i seriously want to just disintegrate into nothing. be nothing. do nothing but pray and read.

but every browning page reminds me of your skin. and the rain, your smile. i'm sorry. sorry that i'm here where you are. sorry that i'm so, so obviously enamored with you. sorry, that i can't hide it. sorry that i can't stop it. sorry that i can't do better. i'm sorry.

Cuts of grass
leaves in the wind
   a moment to be free

Breathe, heavy sigh
a corpse of time
   death but long slept eyes

Oversharing life on feeds
overshadow foreshadowing needs
    it will all end in the usual tears

A love for I—selfish
a love undeserving—relish
   loving honestly, what is a blemish

Feast your eyes on food for thought
and with sweet nothings sought
   afterwards do keep their word

Life is a written poem
a river of those words flowing
  to know where we are, to keep on going

When I realized that love is about moving things around to create space in my heart
For someone else to reside in
De-cluttering
Unleashing 
Clearing out the closets
When I realized that love
Is not just about making room in the back laundry room or on the ragged love seat in the garage
That its not about rearranging my bookshelf to make room for a literary recommendation
or about leaving an empty page on a sketchpad for a portrait
When I realized that love isn't
Handpicking moments of vulnerability with the same intricacy I use to pick tomatoes at the vegetable store
Making space
But not making room
Inviting one into my day
But not into my heart
Hearing, caring, and then disappearing
Fearing the consequences of my oversharing

When I realized that love is about inviting someone all the way in
Breaking the walls and the cages, false images and plastic impressions
Into the silence and the speechlessness
Past the uncertainty and doubt
Past more doubt
And more uncertainty

When I realized that love is about making space at the dinner table after a long day
where the mind races with worry and  arguments sprout
That its about making space in the mess, the chaos, the clouds of constant confusion
And the thunderstorms
Space in the bed when the nightmares begin and when I begin question over and over again
Space where the blood starts pumping
Where my life begins
And ends
At the same time

When I realized that love is about raw honesty
Exposure
Trust
Allowing someone else to strum my strings
Even the weakest ones
The strings that haven't been tuned in years
Letting someone make music of my weaknesses and tunes of my uncertainties
And certainties
If I ever had any

When I realized that this is what love is really about
I shrunk and disappeared into the backroom corner
Head in lap, eyes closed, containing all the feelings

Im sorry
I guess I panicked, Im not sure I made the space yet
For love
and I fear, I'm too small, too scared
To try