bittersweet recollections of your adolescence // 2019 poetry collection

venting

i'm desperate to be loved.

that's what my mother called me once.

desperate.

maybe it's that i've never known

what it's like to not be second best.

my friends are all smarter than me

(if i had a 3.0 gpa i'd cry, he said.

yeah, me too, she agreed.

standing there.

right in front of me)

and all i can manage to feel is

deja vu.

to standing on kitchen tile

seven years old

"why can't you be like your sister?"

"what's wrong with you?"

maybe it's that he loved her more than me.

maybe it's how a guy i barely know

called me "slacker" and it made me cry later

even though i knew he was joking. 

everyone i love leaves me.

"if they leave then they're not the right one,"

my sister says, trying to be comforting.

but how could they all be wrong?

how could they all be wrong?

it doesn't make sense.

none of it makes sense.

the only thing that begins to is that i,

i,

am wrong. 

i'm so tired of hoping and trying

failing and crying

wishing i was dying

because god fuck SHIT

how can i sink everything i have into being good

and still manage to fuck it all up every time.

i'm sorry i'm good at martial arts and pool

and laughing at the right jokes and acting an endearing fool.

i'm sorry that my friends get angry when i'm better

than them at any small thing.

go ahead,

push me down,

you're not doing anything

i'm not used to.

i'm desperate to be loved.

but i'm the wrong person.

it doesn't matter who you are,

i'm wrong.

"i love you." no, you don't, that's just what you think.

watch, look, as i undress my soul and don't you dare fucking blink.

don't look away don't say what we have is perfect as-is

don't push my hands down and tell me you know what love is

"i love you"?

FUCK YOU.

i'm the wrong person. i'm the wrong person.

watch as i prove it to you.

i'm desperate to be loved but i'd rather gouge my own heart out

than let anyone close enough to do it

again.

so watch. watch.

don't fucking blink.

i am so much closer to losing my mind

than any of my loved ones think.