It's a Twisted World

What kind of world is this?
You don't get to put this one on me.
YOU got yourself into this mess.
Didn't you learn a thing as a child?
Shouldn't you know by now that lying will get you in trouble?
Clearly you didn't remember that one.
YOU were the one who thought lying would be an easy way out.
If you're going to lie, at least cover your tracks.
But I guess you learned the hard way.
Now you don't get to put on a puppy face
And act all miserable
And expect sympathy from me.
I won't let you.
Because you did the wrong thing
And I won't let you make me feel bad
For telling the truth.

The Photograph

That photograph looks better
Lying alone on the floor,
Trapped inside its chipped wooden frame,
And topped with a sprinkling of glass.
There, it is a better representation of
Who we are.
Everything about that photograph is wrong.
Who are those smiling people?
They are certainly not like that now.
They are strangers to me,
And strangers to each other.
And that unblemished white background?
It shouldn't be white at all.
It should be stained with midnight tears,
And cut up with sharp words,
And then clouded by the silence that hangs in the air,
The aftermath of a huge mistake.

I would much rather have taken a pair of scissors
And cut those people apart from each other
And scattered them in the wind
So that it may take them far away from this place
But I can't.
So I just let the frame fall from my hands
Onto the fake laminate
And hope that, by shattering the glass,
I can give those people a chance
To breathe
As they suffocate beneath
Their smiling masks.

Two-Faced Pride

"We stop looking for monsters under the bed when we realize they're inside of us."

                                                                                                                                     -Jordyn Berner

Pride is like oxygen,
Something I can never let go of.
I push it though my veins
And let it nourish me.
Like oxygen,
It feeds me; it keeps me alive.
I convince myself
That I am greater than I am,
That I am stronger than I am,
That I am controlling and powerful.
But in reality,
It sucks the life from me.
Unlike the oxygen that ages me,
Pride makes me childish.
It makes me stubborn,
It makes me arrogant,
It makes me unfeeling.
It shuts me away
From the humanity I long to be part of
And from the love I long to feel.
It is my means of survival,
And yet it is killing me.

Eighteen

Eighteen seconds.
Eighteen minutes.
Eighteen hours.
Eighteen days.
Eighteen weeks.
Eighteen months.
Eighteen years.

Yes, look how far I've come.

They say eighteen is special. Eighteen is big. Eighteen is congratulation-worthy. They make it out to be some huge celebration with friends and laughter and joy. Or maybe, it was me who did that. More likely than not, this image was permanently placed in my head by a younger version of me who happened to get bored one Saturday evening and let her mind wander into the future. That is dangerous. It is dangerous because it feeds the mind expectations. And in the majority of cases, the only thing that comes out of expectations is disappointment. Yes, there was a time when I dreamed of being eighteen, when I sat in awe of freedom and maturity and reputation. It's not to say that I do not value those qualities now; I do. Just not from childish eyes anymore. Eighteen is nothing more than a number now, one up from seventeen and just short of nineteen. And as it is wedged uncomfortably between its two neighbors, I am the same. I am confined to the narrow crevice between the last of my childhood and the vast darkness of adulthood. So the reality is, eighteen isn't all that great. In fact, it is mostly confusion and angst, overwhelming choices and difficult decisions. Eighteen isn't fantasy. It's reality.

Sarcophagus

Here is a girl.
Or rather, a sculpture of a girl,
Carefully chiseled by experience itself
And sanded down to precision over the course of many years
From a distance she looks human.
Her clothes, her hair, her bag on her shoulder
Blend her into the mass around her known as society.
But she is not a human.
She is nothing but a statue- unmovable, unwavering, stoic.
Her eyes are but mirrors, reflecting.
They reflect the faces and the emotions of those who pass by her.
They agree and they sympathize,
And sometimes they make people forget that by themselves,
They are emotionless.
They are only mirrors, after all.
And like all mirrors, they go blank when the image leaves.
Mirrors are deceiving sometimes, but they never lie.
Only the rest of her does.
Beneath her armoured skin lives chaos.
It spits and burns like bile,
Trapped inside its stone dungeon.
It churns around her insides like a venomous snake
And she fights it.
She lashes back at it, suppresses it.
Sometimes she manages to squeeze it so tightly,
It oozes out a substance that, only in the vaguest of senses,
Resembles happiness.
And only because it has nothing left to give.
This is the viscous substance that slides unwillingly out of her skin,
Into the outside world.
It too, is deceptive.
It is poison, but it makes her seem ever so slightly mirthful.
Thankfully, it is all the world needs to be convinced that she is an ordinary human being.
Ordinary. Human. Two things she will never be.

Let's Play Pretend

We think we are so amazing. We boast ourselves up to being knowledgeable, competent, successful. We convince ourselves that we exist to serve a purpose; that somehow, we are part of something larger, something grand and magnificent that we as individuals could never be. We are so good at deceiving ourselves, for we have managed to shroud reality in so many thousands of layers of pride that we forget that the tiny speck of reality is even there. But it is. And it utters the loathsome words every single person on this planet hates to hear. We are nothing. We are so insignificant, it is nearly laughable. We will never be the greatest. We will never measure up to the grand costumes we dream ourselves into. But what does it matter? It's all just a game of make-believe anyway. So here's a mask; let's play pretend.