Writing

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,