Perfectionism is begot from high expectations.

Our problems
Seem so big
Until someone
With bigger problems
Tells us
About theirs.

Running
Running
Running
Out of Time.

I am losing the marathon
I am falling behind

Running
Running
Running
Suddenly caught
At the end of my line,
Too slow! I’m out of Time!

I’m made out of colors
Colored outside of the lines.
You say I’m a masterpiece
But I’m so unfinished.
So full of empty spaces.
But maybe
One day I won’t be.

Over and over again
I write the same things
I rant
I weep
I dance
I cheer.

Different words used
But the theme is the same
Pain
And meaningless things.

Over and over and over again,
You look at me like I’m your friend.
You knock, and I let you in.
Over and over and over again.

Never, ever, ever again.
Will I ever let you in.
I don’t trust anyone anymore.
But at least I’m courteous enough to pretend I do.

Are things simple
And I’m over-complicating them?
Or are things complicated
And I’m over-simplifying them.

It’s like a stone
Being added
To the weight
On your back
And then
And then it just breaks.

It’s like when
As a kid
You would wave
Around the bubble wand
And watch it stretch
And strain
And then
And then it just pops.

It’s like running
Until you can’t anymore
Until you’re on
The side of the road
And you can’t breathe
Because knives
Are slicing
Into your lungs.

It’s laying on your bed
Never wanting to get up.

It’s this.

i was messy crying but you
took me into your arms and
told me that you loved me
and that i would be okay.
i am far too scared to let you see
my tears, most of the time,
but sometimes they break free
and i color blue outside my lines.
i thought, somehow, you would leave
me to my tears, alone, but you
did not, and picked me up, brushed off
the dirt, and let the dam break.
it is not always like this, but today
you keep me safe.
the inside of my mind was as harsh
as any bleach, corrosive, acid,
so harsh it needed a warning sign,
so harsh that i could hardly survive,
but now it is quiet and warm and suddenly
i can breathe again when i thought that
the oxygen had run out.

Your magnificence
Cannot be handled
By such as I.

For your light shines so bright
Someone living in darkness (me)
Is blinded by your beauty.

Your dazzling delightfulness
Shocks me into a daze
Cuz dang it, that snow is bright!

Help me
Because the world
Is turning grey.
The color
Once so vibrant
is seeping out
And leaking into our graves.
Love is fading
And hope is too.
Feelings are being buried
So far beneath the surface.
Beauty is pain
And pain is beauty.
Even if it hurts
I don’t want all my pain
To be gone.
I want my emotion,
Even if it kills me.

I’m a paper girl
Rip me up and paste me together.
Dress me up in pretty crayon dresses
Add new pieces of me,
Take me apart.

The past is the past
It is behind me
But I still can’t help
But look back occasionally.

Always drowned out by darkness.
I will never let myself be
Happy and at peace.
I am currently
Tortured and in pain.
I am not always
Okay now.
I am finally
Drowned out so no one can get close.
I don’t want to be
The girl who is ignorant.
I am not
Peaceful and serene.

People are walking poetry
Hard battles inside the mind.
Sometimes soft, sometimes loud, always chaos
Nothing forgotten, left behind.

Sometimes I think that people
Are full of burning hate
Then I realize that they hold love
Two opposing traits.

People are walking poetry
Each of us made of words
Caging feelings so very deep
We are adjectives and verbs
We are poems you’ll want to keep.

I always need to be perfect.
You tell me that I have it all together.
I don’t.
I never do.
I should take it as a compliment,
But the expectation weighs me down.
I need to be perfect.
I need to get good grades in school
So I can get into a good college,
Get a good job,
Have a good life.
I know my parents only want the best for me,
But I don’t ******* want to be perfect.
Crap, cussing is a sin.
But I don’t give a **** **** because I’m not perfect.
On the exterior, I’m calm
Happy
Cheerful.
But I’m really crumbling
I’m falling
Because I’m failing
Because I’m NOT PERFECT.

WHY DID YOU ALWAYS SAY I DIDN’T NEED TO BE PERFECT?
WHY DID YOU LIE TO ME?

I’m not perfect.
I’m crying.
I’m crying because I failed you.

I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry.

Why can’t I be perfect?

Start
Try again
Give up
Try again
Start
Rip yourself apart
Give up
Try again.

You try
So hard
You’re life
Is no longer yours.
Burnt out
You want to quit
But you can’t
No you can’t
Until you reach perfection.

Everybody seems
Terrified of what will happen
When one person or another
Wins this election
And it matters so much
But not so much that you
Need to scream at others telling
Them what to believe, who to
Vote for.

I want to say, “IT DOESN’T MATTER!”
Because we 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 that they will do nothing.
The president is only a single part
Of a single branch
And no one listens to them anyway.
These people may be dangerous
But they are effectively ineffective
And the greatest danger of all
Is how we choose to treat each other,
And no president can change that—
No president can take away this basic
Human decency.

So let us all
Vote personhood
For president.

Let us all look the
Fearmongers in their eyes
And say: 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘥.

Am in the cloak of darkness.
I hate it when I
Find light in darkness
I feel recharged when I
Am enveloped by darkness.
I cannot help but die a little when I
Find a bit of kindness.
I celebrate when I
suffer greatly.
I think it is horrible to
Lead a wonderful life.
I think I should be sentenced to
An eternity of suffering.
I think no one should experience
Pure happiness and joy.

If I am unimportant to you
I wish you could be unimportant too
For I certainly rue
The day I met you
How could I be such a fool?

You know what? I realized I have no idea how to do a Petrarchan Sonnet

Well, I just took an online-test
That told me I was mildly depressed
It also said I’m moderately
Passive-aggressive too.

A couple good things
It said to me,
I’m not a psychopath!
I have high self esteem
And I’m not a narcissist!

No one who knows me
Would ever think
I’m mildly depressed.

Except for you guys
As you have seen
Beneath this phony zest.

I’m not here
All the way so I
𝑷𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒉 my skin
Between my nails to
Try and 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍 something but it’s
Like 𝒌𝒊𝒄𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 a stone and
𝑾𝒐𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 if the rock 𝒉𝒖𝒓𝒕𝒔.

Pit-pat, pit-pat
Shoes slapping on the floor.
Pit-pat, pit-pat
A quiet knock at your door.
Pit-pat, pit-pat
Raindrops, water pure.

My heart took me places
My head could never go.

I soar from the earth
Into the atmosphere
Flying past the moon
Waving at Mars
Landing on an asteroid.

I marvel at the blackness
And sheer volume of the space
Around me and all the
Stunning planets around me.

I speed past Jupiter
Fly around Saturn’s rings
I go past Uranus and Neptune
Into the Kuiper belt.

This world is plastic
Not fantastic

This world breaks
From all the gosh dang fakes.

I’m over here spending twelve stupid years
Becoming a parrot who repeats what she hears
It’s not for the learning, it is for the grade
So I turn off my brain seven hours a day.

I’m wasting, I’m wasting, I’m wasting my time
Even that phrase is a waste of a line
And I’m sick of all of these definitions
Pressing on in, getting marked in red pen—

What am I doing here?
You convinced me there’s answers for everything,
Unvarying, black-and-white lettering,
Supposedly bettering, more like you’re fettering
Me like a prisoner, mental inhibitor
Wish you were valuable, you little swindler,
I’ll play your game, ‘cause that’s all that it is,
A paper to frame, that is all that I get
But if I’m wasting away at this desk,
Forced in the system, then I’ll be the best.

Chatter fills the air
Stop blabbing away
Your empty words
Mean nothing
Speak when you need to
But don’t be fake
Please
And thank you

I am surprised
That I
Don’t make whirring sounds
Like a computer come to life
Because I
Didn’t see my life
Flash before my eyes
When we crashed and
I haven’t cried
At all and I know
That I should’ve that I should’ve that I should’ve
Been scared but I just can’t feel
Anything and that scares me
Most of all.

𝘐’𝘮 𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴
𝘓𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘮𝘢𝘯
𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘴
𝘈𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘴
𝘈𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥
𝙎𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘴.

I see my life through plexiglass
Trying to bulletproof the past,
Nostalgia? No, but I recall
That rising up precedes the fall.
But the films I watch inside my mind
Are missing parts I cannot find
So I fill the blanks with what I see,
I fill it up with what I need.

Now is it truth, or is it lie?
I like to think that I am right,
But I’m not the well-oiled machine
I used to think I used to be.

A poem every day
Keeps the doctor away.
Not really.
I wish.
I would live forever.

Fazed
In a haze
Lost in a maze
Keep on praising
The ones who are crazy.

Poor poor Sisyphus
Rolling a stone up a hill
Nearly get to the top, he did
But the rock rolled down and fell.

Crushed beneath the burden
Of his own type of hell
Destined to labor forever
Rolling that **** stone up a hill.

Possess
The mess
That I am.

I lied
I don’t want to be tied
To you because I know
When you fly you fall.

The power went out
The WiFi went down
The water won’t work
The lights won’t turn on!
But I can still see
Electricity or not
Thank goodness the power caved
In the middle of the day!

Words are so precious
So we mustn’t waste them on hate.

Crackle of the fireplace
I feel your special warmth,
So comfortable
Yet dangerous
My dear fire reborn.

You remind me of love, my darling
Fast and quick, then a slow burn,
Dancing in the moonlight I reach for your fingers
Only to be burned.

But scars heal and so do memories,
And I come back to you,
Even when you hurt me
I adore your precious gold hue.

The present
Is a gift given
By the past
Passed on
To the future.

I am a building
A weak building
With terrible structure.
I cannot handle pressure
I will collapse.

Don’t call me pretty.

I am not a delicate
Rose to be plucked
At your fleeting desire.

𝘕𝘰.

I am
Visceral
Venomous
Vibrant.

I am not a willow
Bending in the time
Of your gusts.
A pastel shade
Of pink, meant to be
Seen, but not noticed.

𝘕𝘰.

Don’t you realize?

𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘶𝘱 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦.

I can’t feel my pulse
I’m afraid I don’t want to
Do I want to?
I don’t know.

Most of my poems
Are purely rhetorical.
My questions too.
I still want answers,
But I am absolutely sure
No one can answer me.

Nothing made me angrier than when
You expected the best from me and I
Felt like it was unfair, and I couldn’t do
What everyone else could, that I didn’t
Have the tools, that this was a race but
I was positioned behind the
Starting line.

I thought you didn’t understand.

And you didn’t.

But you pushed me farther than I thought
I could go, you told me that I could do it—
That I had to.
You held me to that same gold standard,
On the bad days and the good days and
The days in between, you never wavered
And you never gave me the option to
Quit.

So I ran that race, and I ran it fast
I sprinted and leaped and speeded past
Everyone else, despite where I started,
And all I could feel was the rush in the air,
The breath in my veins and the wind in my hair,
The power of my stride, the power of my will,
The strength of my wholeness, this strength I could feel,
And every time, I thought I could not do it.

You did not know my pain—
Yet you pushed me right through it.

It snaps in
With a sigh
Of relief.
Seems like
My mind was missing
A few puzzle pieces.

But you,
You fit right in.

I’m the one puzzle
Missing puzzle pieces
That frustrates
And bothers everybody.

I’m also the dog
That ate the puzzle piece
To discreetly trigger
Everybody.

Have you ever
Felt like crying
And then involuntarily
Make a joke about your life
To make others feel better?

Why are people so
Cruel
Mean
Horrible?

Why do people
Drink themselves
Into oblivion?

Why do people
Let their worst sides show
When their family needs them most?

Why are people any worse
Than animals behave?

Why can’t I answer these questions?

I see dark grey rain clouds above me
Right next to me
Is bright blue skies with
Puffy white clouds

So near
Yet so far away.

Rain is interesting.
It seems to evoke
More feelings than-
I don’t know, something that kinda pokes
You, and prods too,
Because the uncomforted
Think the less, feel the more,
Which leads to ideas galore.

Rain really is very interesting
Rain can make a person sing.
It can make the same person cry
Or scream
Or shout
Or whimper
Or sigh.

Rain is an interesting creature to witness-
Holds feelings of anger, sadness, and success.