I wonder what it's like. To know you're smart, and feel good about things and just things and not being tired and feeling weak all the time. When I look at them they don't look confused.
They seem so happy.
They don't look like they spend their nights with open eyes in the dark, pulling out their hair, and trying to scrape the thoughts from their head with a dirty spoon.
They don't look anxious. Like they're waiting, the way I feel like I'm waiting. For something. Anything. A star to fall. The seasons to change. A constellation to connect in the sky. It should say "You are enough. You don't have to try so hard. You don't have to pretend."
They don't look like me. I don't look like them. Wish I did.
They seem so happy. Even when maybe they aren't. They don't need signs, or superstition, or salt to throw over their shoulder. They just know. Like they were born with it or something. Like God left them with a message, and wrote it with permanent Sharpie on all their insides, "You're enough, you're okay. You're enough, you're okay. You're enough, you're okay." I bet if you cut them open it'd just be pink and black, flesh; red and black, blood and ink. Never gonna wash away.
They're so real. They're so filled up with purity. Molten iron, rich black earth. I'm empty. Synthetic, like a glass bottle. Dried up on the inside. I could crunch into a million tiny little pieces.
They just know. That when all of this is over they'll be okay, with profound things to say, and important things to do with something to live for, and somebody who loves them. They'll be beautiful because they're kind and have roses in their garden. I want roses. Violets, and lilies, and blood poppies. Maybe some daisies too.
I wonder and I want. I thirst for it all day, and come home empty handed and tired and feeling like I wish I could go to sleep forever.
Be like Frida Kahlo with a pole through my gut so I can get so drugged up I can't think.
Live in the woods, where nobody has to look at me. I'd sleep in the vines, and drink water that falls from the mountains and over the stones. I'd stay there all my life, and I'd lose all my memories, and forget all my words, and all I'd know is the earth. I wouldn't even be a human anymore.
They can't see me there. They can't stick their big fingers in my face and prod at my blemishes, and look at all my ugly and all my stupid answers to important questions and connect the dots think "Oh I see. She's one of those," and brush me off and move on to the next.
They don't say it, but I see it. In their faces. When they look me over and sigh. So I'm thinking, "I must be missing a screw." And I look. And I look. And I look under the bed and in the pill bottles in our medicine cabinet and the crumbling velvet compartments of my mothers jewelry box. I look and I look and find nothing but dust. I stay up all night and pour myself out over and over again in tears, and words. Nothing works. Nothing's there. Screw's still missing. I wake up tired, with red-rimmed eyes.
They seem so happy. Everybody seems so happy.
And I wonder what it's like not to wonder what it's like; just to be.
