You could have reached here Wednesday by last choice
Perhaps your mood shifted. All the calm nights
you had now lay awake. You explore the city
built by the perfect people, white cathedral
stands upright on a slant, a compass buried in plain sight,
the gibberish of art students from painting lullabies as sirens.
Only children are asleep. The university
grows younger each year. The best teacher
is always late, not realizing her impact.

The person I’m most comfortable with
stays in bed. Security found indoors
the couch allures, security in the capsule,
The deafening whispers, the genuine friends
who live nearby and can’t talk straight. The blessed temple
building worshiped by advertising majors.

The lucid potential, morning sprints round the track,
a library sustained by crushed Adderall —
glowering orbs rotating back counter clockwise,
out of chimneys the black spirits climb,
detectives bicycling, the honor students rummaging
for class notes in the deep end of the dumpster.

So this is college? That frontier plateauing
before you can dive off a cloud? So this utopia
was a dollhouse, the daily on the doormat
camps in the hallway: waits while the child watches
a sit-com?
Don’t apartments stand still? Are abstract paintings
and basketball supposed to nurture a city,
not only Richmond, but also other lonely cities
of misunderstood brunettes, dank **** and dubstep
the weekend will seldom put out
until the city you moved to shuts its eye?

Just tell yourself, “live.” The best teacher, eighteen
when she moved to the university, still grins
even as she coughs out fiberglass. Any day now,
she sings, I’ll take a drive and leave this place.
I pull her close and say. You haven’t slept in your own bed.
The boy who you’ve always loved still thinks about you.
The books you read before breakfast,
whoever the author may be, inspires
and your least favorite student who raises her hand
is judged but her posture never falters.

Finger at the blue in the sky
Say I want be like that guy
You say you want me to fly
Like the falcon in the sky
Floating, soaring and climbing
Touching white clouds of heaven
But fog chokes the clean lining
Mists like comics with no timing
Yet I can’t understand why
My wings have to still be tied
Down steel chained to the ground
Can’t move on to new chapters
When the pages are bound
Cuts are bandaged by laughter
It’s that why I rest at the nest?
And you stopped the beat in my chest?
I want that heart of a lion
Instead there’s chicken in my breast
Yes, when I was hatched I was immobile
Pure and noble yeah no sight no vocals
Kept me alive never en danger
But now fam-iliar is the stranger
See brown leaves fall and drift from trees
Bark ripped open soil has frozen
Branches broken missing me  
By a couple of feet I’m beat
My feet are perched, ready to drop
Will I hit the ground or see the top?
***** for you I found the key to the lock
Ya see when I want open doors I don’t knock 
Eyes closed and dived, felt like I died
Til the wind caught me for a ride
Touches my tongue breeze fills my lungs 
Arms now glide, I become alive
Rising, plateauing, descending  
Wings can't brake, till my brash bones break
Tears fall beside me befriending
Me, close to my face, my ending
Ladybug bums buzz hovering
Below my beak, two hit my cheek
Flashback when there was smothering
Ate treats of sweets and flesh at my peak
Now how can I flap forever?
Mood severed, Rain struck the weather
Rain drops plop on me like puddles
That and oil in my feathers
I look back and hear organs playing
Baby chicks clinging, Gospel singing
Knees dove deep in bark they were staying
Rain dropped she thought God heard her praying
Let her have his shy reply that’s brief
Let her have peace and hours of sleep
There’s no need for her sighs of relief
Have brain release, there’s no deceased
Looking forward I need to land
Eyes skipping off until I’m crossed

I know that I haven’t always felt this way.
When I was younger, I was nervous.  I was quiet and shy and it always took me a while to warm up to people, even those I saw on every holiday, birthday, and graduation.  But I wasn’t like this.  I wasn’t like the other kids, but I was happy.  I could go about my day without an onslaught of questions running through my head without any reprieve.
I could ******* breathe.
There was a breaking point.
I know that now.
I was sad but I wasn’t like this.  Yet.  I was drowning but still unaware of the fact.  I could get by if I needed to, wanted to, and I did.
Now, a hangnail can plunge me into darkness.
I don’t know how to get back to the before.
I don’t know if I will.
I don’t know if I can keep going on like this.
Hopeless.  
Lifeless.
Every rise and fall of my chest takes a tremendous amount of effort.
Every morning makes me sick, and every night reveals more that needs to be fixed.
Fixed.
They gave me pills.  I went to therapy.  
I talk about it. I talk about it with anyone that will listen.  I know that somehow it helps me, even if in the moments, it makes me feel like I’m helping dig my own grave.  It’s heavy.  It’s tiring.  It comes spilling out of me like a ******* wild fire.  All it needs is that one spark.
God, I’m sick of the natural disaster metaphors.
I know that I’m not a disaster.  I know that this is normal.  I know that there are millions of people around the world that feel just as bad as me.  A lot of them feel worse than me.
But right now, I feel like I’m the only one who has ever known this kind of suffering.
I know that isn’t true.
It doesn’t help.
The air conditioner sounds like a rainstorm.
I miss the rain.
Last Christmas, I got really bad again because the days were so short and my job kept me in the dark and out of the sun every single day.  I forgot what the day is like.  I forgot what it meant to be awake.
It didn’t let up for a long time.  
I had to quit my job to get out of the bad place.
I ended up in another one, though, because then I didn’t have any money and I wasn’t eating enough because I was too anxious to leave my room and I couldn’t focus in school and I ****** my grades up.
I don’t know if I’ll get into Cal Poly.  I kind of doubt it.  
My GPA is average.
I probably had a better chance of getting in in high school, and I still got rejected.
I know I wouldn’t like it there because the people are too normal.  Too white.  Too rich.  Too blinded by their privilege and the pretty bubble they live in.
The happiest place in America.
We’ll see about that.
Maybe.
I used to be like them.  I could have thrived among them.
I’m different now.
My life is divided like that: then and now, before and after.
That’s how I know there was a break.  A shift inside of me.
I can’t see anything the same way.
I hate the people from high school that I used to so desperately want to be popular with.  I can’t eat steak.  My hair is green.  My skin is pale.  Football just doesn’t do it for me anymore.
They’ll tell me it’s loss of interest, a common side effect.
It’s not.
I’m just different.
I don’t eat eggs.
Where is my life going?  Do I need a purpose?
I suppose.
I don’t really want one.
The whole idea of being here on earth for a reason is terrifying.  Angering.
I don’t want to have to do anything.
I just want to live.
But even that isn’t enough for me.  I can’t keep going through the motions.  I love my routines, need my routines to keep from falling apart, but I think they are killing me.
I don’t know any alternative.
Routines keep money in my bank account, good grades, enough food in my stomach, strong legs.  
I would be nothing without them.
They are the ******* replacement for the purpose I loathe to discover.
I know where I am headed.
I will get bad again.  Just in time for the holidays.  And I’ll lose my grip for a while.
The anticipation is a *******.
I can feel the pressure building inside of me.  I can feel the vibration.  I can sense the change before I can recognize it.  
A volcano.
And then what?
I live on my own.
If I go down, I go down alone.
Alone.
Alone.
Alone.
Maybe that’s what get’s to me so much.  I know that I need human connection because it’s basic biological fact.  I know it I know it I know it.  I refuse it.
It’s too hard.
It’s takes more energy than I can spare right now.
I hate that I have to think this way.
Because it’s a need, not a choice.  I can smile and laugh and tell myself I love life and all the little joys it has to offer me, but it doesn’t change how I really feel, what i really know about life.  I’ve felt the pain.  I’ve ******* made it my wife.
It’s raining again.
I can hear every whisper in this **** library.
I can never find a book.
The medication is plateauing.  There’s only two more doses after this one, and I’ll have to try something else soon.
I did this to myself.
I know that,
It doesn’t help.

I ponder where I’m going
Always looking but never showing
Up to where I need to go I keep blowing
My chances of finding it are plateauing
I need to get there without owing
My life savings can’t keep growing
If I keep lowering my blade for mowing
My destination will never be visited allowing
The past demons to keep vowing
To stop me from peacefully bestowing
My final destination is cowing