Poetry

You’re different

With all of us

Versus just me.

You’re different

With a whole crazy friend group

Than you are when it’s us chilling in your basement watching Stranger Things 

People want things from me

This incredible group of people

They want me to mediate

To laugh

To help them with x, y, and z

They want me to come with them

Pulling me in different directions constantly

Ad astra

Latin for to the stars

something that we've never done yet

but we've gone near.

We've never gone to the stars

we've reached the not-quite-emptiness that surrounds them.

I don't know what this is

whether it's summer really sinking in

or if it's something else

something more

something worse.

I don't want to turn into this

a puddle of negative feelings and boredom.

Everyone always thinks that people act a certain way to please the people around them

to code switch to what everyone else would want

to blend in

and that's what I do, too

except most of what I do

You have plastered my eyelids open 

Non contact tonometry

Force fed with gavage until I no longer awake 

at the smell of burning grease.

Burrowed into retinas like a small flaming needle,

My whole life I have been trying to tell a story so beautiful that the world would fall in love with me.

That is why I befriended words and stage lights.

That is why I watch the details of the world

Remember the girl?

She’s in second grade,

Maybe

Blond brown curls

Blue green eyes.

She’s sitting on the top metal pole of the fence

Chipped green paint

As it turns out

humans always

always

learn the hard way,

can never take the safe route.

We're that stupid, yes

but without human stupidity we wouldn't know about the pineapple

The gears click

spin

twirl into place

the momentum of thousands of dreams

swinging

gliding

leaping

across the vast emptiness we call home.

The dreams

along with hopes

fears

A childhood obsession, sure.

That's how it started.

But it's all I am -

It's who I am -

It's the deepest

Truest

Version of myself I could possibly be.

The notebook.

Stats and tracking

I will not shave my legs

not because I am against it

but because being myself feels like my own act

of rebellion

I will not quiet down

let the world hear my pride and excitement

but I will not shout