Heartpen: Poems of a Cardiac Quill

Pixels

Friends admire

our digitized happiness,

unaware of what led

to images they praise on social media.

Can you connect dots

that aren't there,

pixels

that aren't there?

Between photographs we post online,

we are

not unhappy,

not ugly,

not lonely,

not unstable.

Instead,

between the photographs,

we are

unhappy sometimes,

ugly sometimes,

lonely sometimes,

unstable sometimes.

We take snapshots when we feel content

because that is what we yearn to remember,

though often what remains uncaptured

in our reductive scrapbooking

is what got us

to those moments of contentment.

The hurt between the hashtags and

the uncertainty between the uploads.

The self-denial.

The imposter syndrome.

The are-we-good-enoughs,

and are we?

We are.

But most importantly,

you are.