A Series of Hard, Unfinished Inside Thoughts

I become myself over and over again by sacrifice(s)

I trade my depression for mania

I weather thoughts with a raggedy shield that looked so much more appropriate in a different light

I listen to people who know nothing and say so

I listen to people who know nothing and say they know everything

I move through euphoria of knowledge about everything

I am destroyed by how little I am and how little I know

I am embarrassed by everything I’ve ever done before bed and randomly in the shower

I watch people’s babies be born and take their first steps on the internet

I talk to myself and answer back and am terrified by old fears that formerly looked smaller in a different light

I listen to books on tape and lose things I just had in my hands

I reflect on everything I’ve loved and imagine never having it in my hands again

I am grateful as a weapon to ward off misfortune

I guard myself like a body that has fallen and has been identified by buzzards who are relentless and wanting to pull my flesh away from the bone

I go to church in nature and the sound of my own voice is so droll i don’t realize it is my own

coming out from under my mask

responding to a conversation that happened over a decade ago

I find little mementos from past selves and want to remember everything 

Build altars to the small self that is still responding to emails on time

And clinging to what ifs as a means to avoid abandonment

She reaches out to the world and none of the hands that reach back have a firm grasp

I am sad for her

My plants grow so boisterously that I mistake the green as confidence of my own and bring another plant into my house, a more sophisticated one with fungus gnats

And they tear through the soil of my well potted life

Haunt my dreams

Fly in my face while I teach to all the tiny people on my screen

I wonder what their houses look like outside of the frames

I feel the euphoria of performance when I see their heads nodding, their little smiles

I am broken when I can’t answer their smug questions

I feel the exhaustion of performance

It is orgasmic to have answers to smug questions

All of my fruit spoils and sometimes my flowers last for two weeks on my altar without fresh water

Washing laundry gives me the feeling of getting away with stealing and the laugh that fist fights it’s way up my throat scares me 

I hope no one else hears it and thinks that I think life is okay even for this little moment

I fear laughter is an omen that something bad will happen

I check my symptoms against a too bright computer screen

I have all the diagnoses 

I remake myself in the image of Black femmes who were wicked and needed no one and I have nowhere to go with my new attitude but the internet

When i am feeling completely alone, unlovable and broken

It makes me feel like I have a choice

Like living this way is a lifestyle

I dress up in clothes to go nowhere

Don’t want to wash my face

Do want to apply sparkles to it

Pursuit of perfection is killing us and 

Everyday i forget.

I do my best and it's never good enough

I become a mean principal terrorizing the single pupil in the school, me

Have I always been this way?