You clock in like it’s sport.
Bare minimum effort,
maximum proximity.
Enough to say you showed up -
not enough to matter.

I am the weather
you wade through
on the way to his sun.
Your shoes stay dry,
your conscience cleaner
than it deserves.

You breathe my warmth
like free air.
Touch softness
without ever asking
what it costs to be this open.

You sip from my life,
call it kind,
but only when it’s convenient.
When you’re not too busy
filing fantasies
under someone else’s name.

And still -
you linger.
You sit in the quiet I built,
wearing your smug smile
like a medal
you didn’t earn.

Trophies come with rules.
Show up.
Stay present.
Give a ****.

But you parade around
with your little ribbon of recognition,
plastic pride on a shelf
gathering dust.
Not for winning.
Just for being nearby
when something beautiful bloomed.

You didn’t plant a thing.
Didn’t water.
Didn’t tend.

But here you are,
touching the petals,
posing for the picture,
as if the garden
knows your name.

There’s a man
who speaks for me
when my throat burns raw
from holding too much back.

British.
Refined.
A little too sure of himself -
but isn’t that the point?

He showed up in the static,
when my own voice
started splintering
under the weight of smiling.
Back when masking
meant survival,
and sounding different
was the only kind of safe I knew.

He’s not always kind,
but he’s always ready.
Crisp consonants.
Neatly folded sentences.
No stammer, no stray emotion.
Just enough distance
to keep breathing.

He isn’t me.
But I let him live
in the hollow between words,
in the pause where fear used to be.
Some days, I speak
and only realize later -
it was him, not me.

He doesn’t ask questions.
He answers them.

I wonder sometimes
what he’s protecting.
Or hiding.
Or holding up like armor
against the softness of me.

Colonizer?
Comfort?
Cohabitator?

He was born
in the croak of survival.
And now,
even when I’m safe,
he stays.

I would never send him away.
He kept me whole
when I didn’t know I was breaking.
If I carry him still,
it’s because
he carried me first.

No matter my crisis,
There’s one thing I know-
Even when I’m at my lowest,
I still make the ******* joke.

The room goes quiet,
So I start to smile.
Deflecting pain like an actress,
It never goes out of style.

Tears sting behind my eyes,
But I deliver the line clean.
And everyone laughs,
Because no one knows what the **** it means.

My hurt has a laugh track-
Invisible, robotic, rehearsed.
And if I keep it playing loud enough,
Maybe I won’t feel the worst.

Because silence feels like sinking,
And truth feels like a loss.
But a joke? That’s a win.
Misery is humor’s final boss.

Change the perspective
Like it's an elective
Chosen over the summer
To be my fifth period

Just say you’re happy
Be loving and sappy
Like a 90s sitcom wife
Who’ll never leave her husband

Do what you must do
Plan, not impromptu
Like a 2000s rom-com wedding planner
With a touch of OCD

It’s the deck you bought
The cards want you to rot
As if a deep dive on tarot
Could turn you into an intuitive genius

Mope like a poet
Standing strong like you know it
Like writing your pain
Isn’t still just performance in another font

Process and grieve
You’re so ready to leave
As if leaving my Crocs out of sport mode
Lets me linger longer

A shatter of glitter
Breaks over her eyes
When she looks in the mirror:

Swathes of pink
Speckled by silver circles
Matched by the anxious glittering
Of the waterfall
That is her earrings.

It's her last glance
To hold the spectre
Of herself
Until she explodes
With the other girls;
Prim and dainty.

Lunch breaks, school plays
Why you had me as the fool played?
I loved you, but I can't stay.

Sometimes I have to remind myself what a monolith is:
  A slab.
  A structure too heavy to argue with.

It doesn’t blink.
It doesn’t beg.
It just stands.

I am not one.
But I pretend.
  I straighten my back,
  Hold my breath,
  And let people leave fingerprints
  On something they think won’t break.

But I crack,
  Only where no one sees.
Not like stone,
  But like anything that remembers being softer.

Sometimes I have to remind myself what a monolith is:
  Unmoving,
    Unmoved,
      Unreal.