My best friend is called Lola.
“It’s short for Dolores,” she told me,
before she became someone else.

She liked music, reading, English lessons at school, doing homework, dying her hair, cutting her hair, painting, drawing.
Anything that had creativity.

I gradually became to hate her
over the course of a few minutes
I saw a video about not being enough.
The comments were filled with:
“Everybody is so much prettier.”
“Why can’t I be like them?”
“I’m the ugliest of my friends.”
They all resonated with me.

Then I realised that out of all my friends,
she was the only pretty one.

I won’t bother describing
as beauty is subjective.
But, to me, she was everything
I wanted to be and everything
boys wanted these days.
She had multiple boys that liked her.

Me? You know the answer; don’t lie.

She never seems to take the boys anywhere,
she just talks to them civilly,
giving them mixed signals;
like my face.

I always make sure I look happy.

The point is:
Lola is everything I’m not.
Lola has boys for plenty, yet look at me.
Lola has a balance between grades and life, but I can’t even regulate my emotions properly.
I hate her so ******* much.

Lola was my best friend.
She probably got so sick of me
so she moved on.
I can’t move.
I hate Lola.

I realise that the
mere thought of doing
anything with my friends
sends me into eternal sadness
because I am just a
vessel, a nobody, just
someone who hangs around
because they have no one else.

I think I wanted to be a surgeon
at one point,
but I now know that it’s just
another uneaten fig on
Plath’s fig tree.

I’m on the red eye.
Sleep is the connected state
of mind that they all share.
Then we jolt awake.
The plane is no longer
and the pilot was never.
I can see out of the window.
It is coming closer, dressed as death.
We hit it, I go out.
Then I wake up.
Cliché.

once the rain has stopped
the bad thoughts flood through.
my mind darkens and the clouds lighten.
they lighten their load
but mine becomes heavier.

i look at the time;
don’t trust anyone after nine PM,
not even yourself.

then again, i can’t trust anyone
anymore, not even during the day.

“Just disappear,” I echo.
Not out loud, obviously.
No one would pay attention.
No, no one does pay attention.

“It’s easy,” I think.
Just take the razor.
The razor that makes me
feel reminiscent of 1984.

“Red’s a beautiful colour,” I bargain.
If I could see the aftermath,
if I could see the red stain their lives,
then I'd find happiness at least once.

“The pain is worthwhile,” I gaslight.
The blue nile visits me,
not in dreams, but in my ears.
I send myself downtown lights,
and hope someone sees the ones and zeros.