It worked.

I sit on my kitchen floor, alone.

I said what I needed to, I defended those who needed defending behind their backs.

I did everything right, and

It

Worked.

Everybody's happy.

And I sit on my kitchen floor, alone.

Why do I need to blame myself?

Why do I need to be at fault.

Why can't I just take the win?

Everybody's happy.

It worked.

And I'm at the jury pleading guilty

Who'd have thought the lawyer would confess? She was quite an experienced lawyer. And what on Earth is she confessing to?

Put me in jail, I beg of you. Put me in jail, I'm guilty. Please.

Everybody's happy. Thank God.

And I'm on my kitchen floor,

wondering why.

Maybe I only feel at peace when I'm punished. Hold myself accountable, and I'll be morally okay. But only if I'm held accountable for something.

So let me be your martyr, let me be your villain, but don't you dare make me a hero.

It worked, but it wasn't me.

Let me stay behind the scenes.

But what could I have done, had I interfered before?

there's something that needs changing alright

it's you not me

you with your screeching baggage grievances

my solitary soul blightly stagnant solidly set

it's you not me

forever fretting tumultuously discontent restless rue regret

mucking about disrupting my calm congealed convictions

it's you not me

that pressing whirlwind inside your flaming gut no heart

howling for things to be different than they certainly are

it's you not me

with your pathetic inability to manage make do carry on

simply setting your mind to the shiny chrome coping dial

instead of repeatedly frantically flipping the off/on switch

than begetting a bloody awful panic when you don't change

there's something that needs certain changing alright for sure

it's you not me

i don't notice what people

say around me; their actions

are not really a mystery because

that implies a curiosity i lack.

but there is noise and movement

coming from other humans and i

am unmoved by their tumults. i

notice how people drive--the

throb of the gas pedal, the

pound of the brake. i notice

their flawed gestures of careening

metal and know there are meat packets,

delicate as ground chuck,

driving these horrid machines.

We all go at least 60 mph to

various destinations, knowing

not all of us will make it.

I'm not from a small town where everyone knows everyone. Where we stop to smile, greet, and wave. I'm from the capital, where the roads are scarred and the pollution in the gray sky is terrorizing school children with asthma before they even learn their ABCs. I'm from the city with the most violence. Car break-ins, assaults, and murders. Where people spit on the sidewalk, where the homeless man sleeps at the bus stop. Where every year, the same politicians promise if we vote for them, they'll be the ones to change this hopeless city. Then they turn around and use our tax dollars to vacation in places I can't even pronounce. But, I learned to drive on those scarred roads. I paused and waited on the playground as my weezy friends got out their inhalers. And I cried as many of them inevitably moved away. I gathered with hundreds of others on my city streets to protest those same politicians and seen the homeless man from the bus stop awake from his slumber to cheer us on.

my lover is a vulture

i a silver crane

side by side

we live our lives

through pleasure

and through pain

my lover is barbaric

he only feeds on bones

though i prefer

a glimmering fish

i hate to eat alone

the people think it strange

that i dance for him

by the way they talk

you'd think it was a sin

but it's not odd to me

our twisted harmony

for the red on my head

is the red on his chest

i see it

and so does he

©coyotetrickstergod|daniellejacobs

Curious George found Skis

Gave me another book to read

And I sat on the stairs

The sun shines blue

The plants wanted food

And somebody, somewhere, cared

The ceiling fan spun

I watched and had fun

I'm one so easily entertained...

Long conversations can

Be found in small talk

"It's been a while since it rained"

I'm

What can I say?

My heart is prone to stupid heroics.

With a brush full of emotional bullshit,

I try to paint over the morose with beautiful words.

I have made an art form out of overestimating my significance in others’ lives.

I make time for the people that matter to me

and get so damn hurt when they don’t reciprocate.

Every single time.

And I never learn.

I “paint” words with my pain.

I hope no one sees through it.

Stubborn. Oversensitive. Unrealistic. Loser.

What can I say?

This is me.

As a poor neurodivergent LGBTQIA+ AFAB Jew who has severe allergies, I know my fair share of discrimination.

If you still don't get it, I was bullied from elementary to the beginning of high school, mostly for being short and smart.

You must understand, right?

I was raised by a single mother starting around my eighth birthday when my dad moved for a job. That turned into them being separated and then divorced by the beginning of middle school for me.

The weight of knowing how much debt my ma is in is immeasurable. Her meager raises are nothing in comparison to the skyrocket of inflation

If you really don't get any of this, you're the problem I'm protesting.

Well, not you directly, but the system that has created you.

The same system that created the kids who bullied my mom when she was in school for not having name brand clothes.

The system which leaves her with so much debt even today because of the systematic barriers put in the little, likely neurodivergent, Jewish girl's way.

Shaming her for her family's financial situation, scaring her as she continues to have the same issues.

Now juggling me, a college student with all the descriptors from the beginning and the ongoing struggle to be debt free, when credit cards are no longer usable because of the amount owed.

I'm not asking the not understanding rich person to come down to my level of suffering.

I just wish it was reasonable to think my mom might not struggle economically one day.

That the barriers only passable by luck should be lowered to allow people to actually move up based on their hard work.

If hard work got you places, my mother would be rich.

We have the privilege of skin tone, so I don't mean to shape us up as having it worse than everyone else.

I know we have it better than many, many others.

I don't see those below us getting support as discrimination; I see the use of our identities as ways to put us down as such.

It must take ignorant privilege to think others being represented and helped as discrimination.

No one deserves to be discriminated against; no one knows that better than the oppressed. What makes people think those who hate oppression and discrimination the most would cause or wish for others to experience it?