stay gold, ponyboy

Something random I weote yesterday when i was feeling sentimental but I kind of like it...?

There's a cut in my finger and it stings

There's goosebumps on my arms in the lake

There's a splinter in my hand from old wood

There's hairs upright from the cold early sun

There's smoke in my eyes from the campfire

There's shivers in my teeth pining for the stars

There's a cut in my finger

There's dirt under my nails

There's ash in my hair

I only used to sleep with my childhood stuffed toys 

When things were so hard I needed to feel held

Now they lie under my head and inside my arms like a pillow every night 

I look into their eyes and I feel the waves of guilt

“So much potential” I hear the voice echoing in my head

“Wasted 

Wasted

Wasted.”

I apologize to no one in particular and tire myself out with my own emotions

I didn’t ask for this, 

I tried, 

I was just trying to survive

I still haven’t let myself go.

I feel myself melting into my own sorrow

I never wanted to wallow in self pity when others experience so much worse

But all I wanted was to try to make up for the years I lost

Run through grass fields and watch the sun set 

But maybe that’s something I’ll never get

I play through my daydreams of all the surprise birthday parties and big warm hugs I’ve ever craved

Again and again in my head

Trying to claw my way out

I am praised for my strength but it was born out of how there was no other way to live

And sometimes I wish I didn’t have to be so strong all the time.

Find me 

Help me

Save me

Where is everyone running?

The middle aged balding men with briefcases on the subway panting and hopping endlessly along 

as they try to make it to their next conference

but not before a secret meeting with their much younger paramours after their hideous overweight bitch wives let themselves go

And the Straight-A high schoolers with their fifteen different AP classes

repeating and repeating and repeating formulas for integration and projectile motion and what was the name of that guy who invented computers again? And government structures and cell division mnemonics and –wait, he killed himself? Whatever. Chat GPT, what’s a significant challenge in my life and how does it make me a strong candidate for engineering at Yale?

And the lifeless parents watching over like haunted Christ the Redeemers as they consent to their children’s souls being slowly chipped away bit by bit by bit by whatever fucking garbage keeps them occupied for the indefinite excruciating total of three stops from home to the eye doctor’s office

Why does nobody have any fucking time for anything or for me? I can’t help but wonder if it would even matter if I just packed my shit up and disappeared and got a new name one day. Would anyone notice at all or would they just go back to their stupid fucking Slack calls?

Am I the only one whose arms and legs feel like lead every morning as I try to roll off of my mattress? Who gazes off into the sunset hoping things will be better tomorrow and congratulating myself for making it through another day? Who goes on walks in the pouring rain just to feel something– anything– because feeling like I’m towing around a truck five thousand times larger than myself that’s surgically attached to my ankle is still better than feeling nothing? Who sneaks glances at the groups of people my age and feels the pain in my throat as I start tearing up over how badly I wish I could have lived, how badly I wish my life wasn’t taken from me? 

How is it so easy for everyone else to live

When you were gone, I held my sweater close

Like not even God could get between it and my chest

And breathed in the smell of your perfume that you left on it

like I needed it more than oxygen

I went on a walk as rain poured down on me

Sat amongst nothing but fennel plants and robins

And thought about how I wanted to take you here one day 

To kiss you as the sun itself blushed in the sky

Later,

I watched the sun melt into the water

Yellow into blue

And thought of how I wanted to melt into your arms

And gently caress your thumbs and your back with my fucked up nails

I closed my eyes in the dark and kissed my hands as if they were your neck

And rinsed my lipstick off of the birthmark next to my left pinky in the shower

With the sandalwood scented soap foaming on my pink washcloth

Waiting for the day that there would once again exist 

A much easier way to clean the dark brown color

Finally, when you threw yourself around my neck, I couldn’t breathe for a second, 

But less because of the pressure and more because it had felt like a century’s time

Since the last I saw you,

Like the cowherd and the weaver girl ensconced in each other upon the bridge of magpies

And whenever I look down at your head on my lap, unable to control my smile

As I let your hair, holier than the Lord’s word

Fall through my hands like hot pink threads of gold

I know that

acid, spite

in spite of myself, I don't drink the acid

I realize that I am not doomed forever

foster, cabin

Naani attempt

words: tree, twist

dark green trees twist

into shapes and into each other

the heavens pour down in wrath and guilt

irony, thaw

the crystallized sweat on your philtrum thaws away as you stare at me and plead that you didn't kill her,

but I hear her nerves humming under the floorboards

and when I put my ear to them I am met with the sound of her blood rushing thousands of times more intensely than

ok these are going to be small and maybe shitty because oh my god fuck fuck fuck fuck I have so much to catch up I gotta stop running away from it LMAOO

words: shine, loyalty

the fog strikes dissonant chords as your glass horse gallops closer and closer to the bleak brick castle

its hooves break away slowly and make an incessant and insufferable cracking clinking sound

you've only got one person to see and one thing to do

the thunder nearly pushes you off your seat but you use the reins made of your enemies hair to pull yourself back up

you just have to focus. just stare and get it over with.

but as soon as the rotten gates swing wide for you and you see that she still has not taken the cherry red strand out of her hair

even when her worthless pig of a lover wheedles and pries to know where it came from

do grains of salt in the ocean wonder about their tan counterparts

sail through the mouths of baleen whales and mating cycles of seahorses

in search of something that might lie out there beyond what they could imagine

ride, ride, ride forever

ride the waves, bide their time

slowly chip away at themselves over millions of years

trying to blow bubbles out of a makeshift wand fashioned out of splinters and old twigs

there is a small piece of the peach

I devoured earlier this afternoon

stuck in between my two front teeth

no matter what I do I can't seem to get it out

I've tried pushing against it forever with my tongue

pulling at it with my clumsy fingers

rinsing my mouth out with salty disgusting water

over and over again

staring at myself in the mirror and noticing my new blemishes

looking behind my cocoa eyes in my reflection and realizing

Spiral II

Spiral I

Staring through the layers of glacial fog

I see your silhouette climbing the peak

I know it's you just from the way you walk

I imagine you staring across the barren lands

And know you wish to ride upon every bison