I was starving in
Pennsylvania.
One night, I had
enough.
Done with it all.
The poverty and
sickness.
The drunken mad
nights
and dog-fight days.
Brutality for breakfast.
Served sunny side up
runny yolks with
butterflies trapped in
the yellow sunshine.
Spiders built webs in
my soul.

I stood on the torn-up
couch in my living room and
yelled at the walls.

Listen, you devil.
You want me, you better be
ready for a fight.
I paced the floor like a
washed-up heavyweight champ,
eyeing the ceiling like a
drunken sparrow in a cat's mouth.

If you have to lie, then deep inside,
You already know the truth you hide.
The words you twist, the stories bend,
Can never heal, can never mend.

A shadow creeps with every tale,
A weight that grows with every veil.
The truth, once bright, is lost in gray,
Each step you take leads you away.

You know you’re wrong with every breath,
Each word you speak, a quiet death.
If truth is gone, then so are we-
A bond can’t live on false debris.

If you must lie to make it through,
Then face the truth: it’s not worth you.

The flower needs rest,
so winter tucks it beneath the earth,
letting it sleep until spring.

The sun needs rest,
so the clouds and rain embrace it,
shielding its warmth for another day.

We’re in a young-love recession.
Gen Zers are slow to trust and averse to risk,
we have, it seems, a particular social nervousness
about interpersonal exchanges and the symbiosis of love.

So we resort to situationships (undefined relationships),
a stratagem for closeness, with zero commitment.

You can flirt; you can kiss; you can dance.
You can have a crush so big it blots out the stars
You can have transformative romantic encounters
you can care deeply and get hurt badly
you can, in fact, be absolutely wrecked by love
All without ever being in a relationship.

Thank God we’re only young once.
.
.
Songs for this:
Die With A Smile by Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars
Busy Woman by Sabrina Carpenter

A moth ate my clothes
But I didn't really mind
'Cause he said he was a butterfly

Blood-dark days and lilies in bloom,
the knife, the gun, the operatic end—
all goodfellas and grandfathers,
all godfathers and millionaires
at yet another Sicilian funeral.

I was young and arrogant,
I dared to walk behind a Mafia boss.
I could have taken the long way
around the circle of captains he sat among,
but I didn’t—he felt my presence.    
He turned, slow, deliberate.
The look he cast my way
haunts me to this very day.

It was as if the dead man’s eyes
opened in the boss’s stare,
and I was staring at a cold, dead soul,
staring back at me,
and at another funeral—my own.

To be a piece of paper
Thrown at sea,
Crumpled—furiously
Unable to be.

To row against
Undaunted waves,
Tall as mountains,
Jagged as nails.

Oh, to wish
To greet the sand,
Just to meet
Some reader's hands.