The longer this persists,

The longer my mind festers.

The longer I am locked away from the world,

The smaller the world seems.

Now, I wonder: why?

Why do I even want this to end?

What happens if this dreadful phase should pass,

If the pandemic should shatter now, like the smashing of the glass?

What then? We still live out our lives on one single rock

Floating around in space, and talk the same old talk?

We will live out our lives on this oh-so-tiny sphere,

And let it be known that we shall never leave from here.

Perhaps some day so far from now

There will be those so fortunate

To be able to venture far and escape our present torment.

Our planet is a speck of dust within the greater cosmos.

We may as well all live inside but a small room, at most.

The longer I remain like this the smaller the world seems.

I cannot help but wonder: if this curse should suddenly be lifted,

And I travel to Bangkok or Kathmandu,

Would the world, once again, in its vast size, be to renew?

Or now that I have seen how small our fragile home such is

Would it be impossible to escape that perception,

Now that I can see that our rock is but a grain of sand on a mighty shore?

Here, there is nothing new.

Once one has explored the whole world, they are unlikely

To venture beyond the simple atmosphere of our planet.

Our present existence is like an old video game:

Once all the levels have been completed, it can be played no more…

I will die on this tiny rock where which I started.

This small rock of a planet that can be circled in as little as 50 hours...

At this, I now look up, and open my door,


And I see a little feline sitting there upon the floor.

Well, you are more fortunate, in this case, than am I,

I think, as I am drawn to hear his squeaky cry.

At least you do not yet know the size of the world that you explore,

And cannot explore its half in your lifetime; therefore…

I opened the door to the house, and the cat sprints out.

This world, to him, is likely endless. At least, in this short moment,

I have given him what I doubt I will ever obtain: the illusion of infinity.

Why do I even care? To a peasant tied to a farm eight hundred years ago,

I have a grand expanse of land before me to explore…

But now I feel: my house, the entire world, what’s the difference anymore?

honestly, i’m crumbling

shuffling about on feet that once danced

walking with outstretched fingertips

wishing for a spindle and some sleep

honestly, i am afraid

there’s no cure for the shaking of my shoulders

no antidote for the poison in my soul

i am a girl rotting in her own skin

honestly, i want to die

but the fear outweighs the wanting

so i am left sitting, waiting, wishing

for something to kill me

so i don’t have to kill myself

honestly, i smile and laugh

but it's all manufactured

so you don't have to see the red eyes or hear the sobs

so you can go on laughing with light shoulders

believing all is right with the world

and i can go on pretending

because make-believe is easier than reality, right?

she tells herself she's okay.

but i know everytime she goes on a jog, she runs until she can't breathe.

she tells herself she's okay.

but i know she cries on the weekends.

she tells herself she's okay.

but i know she takes boiling hot showers just to feel something.

she tells herself she's okay.

but i know, her one wish, is to have nothing in her veins.

Right now...

She's breathing, blinking and occasionally breaking.

To believe.

She's doubtful, divided and sometimes distant.

To decide.

She's lost, learning and usually loving.

To leave.

She's waiting, waivering and also wondering.

To wince.

Right now?

God, you think I know?

What am I doing right now?

Trying not to drown in my own fears, for one. For a second I had the waves under control, but I can feel them lapping at my ankles, waiting and ready to swallow me--sorry. I know, I'm stronger than that, right?

That's what they say, anyway. What I'm doing is following their advice. I'm going to keep wading deeper and deeper until my feet can't feel the sand anymore and I'm just trying not to breathe in the water under my nose--I'm doing it again, aren't I?

Sorry. I guess I panicked for a moment, but I'm fine.

I'm fine.

Nothing's wrong.

What am I doing right now?

I in the context of the universe? Well, I'm nothing at all, that's for sure. Ha, no, you didn't want that answer, I get it. Of course, we're all a part of something.

But what I do... it doesn't matter, right? I mean, I'm not trying to make a difference; I can't.

What's that? We all can? Sure, I know that.

It's just... when you're trying to keep your head above the water, when all you can do is kick and kick and try for a moment to feel the ground and take a breath, it's hard to feel like anything's going to matter. Going to matter to anyone but yourself. Selfish thought, isn't it? Or is it, to want to take care of yourself?

Well, that wasn't the question. Sorry. Again.

So what am I really doing right now?

I'm holding a smile. I'm trying not to fail. I'm kicking. I'm doing my work every day without a complaint and telling myself it's fine, it makes me happy--or, it's going to. I'm contemplating existence. I'm drowning. I'm telling myself that if I keep doing the things that I'll work through everything, that everything's ok, that these feelings are passing, that it'll be ok as long as I tough it out. I'm learning what 'tough it out' is. I'm not being weak. I'm crying in the shower. I'm living. I'm alive. I'm not feeling alive. I'm looking to the future, because it's stupid to be anxious and there's no reason to hyperventilate and I'm overreacting and it's absolutely nothing and everything will be fine if you just stop thinking so goddamn much.

And I'm smiling a photoshoot-worthy smile as the water rises.

That's what I'm doing right now.

Oh.

How am I doing right now?

I'm doing fine, thanks. How're you?

Procrastinatin’

As I rest my hand under my chin

My mind starts to drift

Although I’m at work mid-shift

And I should be reviewing accounts

Or cross checking amounts

And the children are home bound

With this coronovirus around

So I should do homeschool

Although I’ve emails to do

Maybe I’ll just make another cup of tea

And have a biscuit or three.

#behonest

Write.

Write anything.

Write something.

Jot your thoughts down,

Or sleep will never be found.

A mile a minute.

Ten thousand words per second.

Everything’s got me thinking.

You, them, there, here, where.

Lately I’ve been daydreaming.

I’m fascinated with puddles,

That’s where portals come from, you see.

That’s where I want to be.

A whole new different reality.

Stargazing,

But in a different galaxy.

There’s more than what meets the eyes.

More than just daydreaming inside.

I’m confused,

I’m straight,

I’m distraught,

I’m out of place.

I’m-

That’s enough.

my breath is caught in my throat

or in my lungs, halfway

down the dark canals

of mouth and bone

or am I wilting?

the notes are not where they used to

be, the patterns of my ribcage

traced in lines

down my sides

have they forgotten how to expand?

or have my muscles collapsed?

clogged with dust

and pieces of all the songs

I didn’t sing

and now the notes are

rusty, stuck behind the

husky bars of broken

breath support;

I don’t mind if I die, but please

I need to have the breath to

sing if I’m alive

I'm a bit numb right now.

I don't feel much of anything

and the days pass in a blur,

but it's okay.

It's better than feeling like shit all the time,

which is what I've been doing in the

past.

I keep waiting for my emotions to catch up to me.

Like all the stuff

I haven't felt

in the past few months will catch up to me in an overwhelming waterfall.

But that hasn't happened yet.

Maybe it never will.

Maybe I'm done with feeling.

I'm not really sure how I feel about that.

Ha, ha...

I'm not really sure how I feel about anything.

My feelings are detached from me.

I am a whole different person.

Friends and family are worried about me,

they ask if something's wrong.

And I'm not lying when I say no.

Nothing is wrong.

I'm just numb.

And that's okay.

I'm really angry. I mean, that's not surprising since we are only a week into a new year and the radical whites are acting up. But honestly, I don't care about that. I've taken enough ecology classes to know that people don't change the root cause of things. Fixing the foundation requires drilling into the house, and the populous don't trust that eventually, that small period of strife will be over. The saying "History repeats itself" is truncated from the saying "History repeats itself if you don't know about it", which honestly is the best representation of history I've ever read. These radical whites in their MAGA hats and anti-semitic gear carrying around nooses like a bunch of confused children whose Halloween has been canceled makes for good memes and some vacuous conversation comparing irritation from people scared that the house may be drilled into to people that are homeless asking for housing.

Analogies aside, good luck with all that noise. I am mad because I have to change my fucking minor again, tweak my goddamn schedule again, and send more emails to ensure that I can finally fucking graduate. I thought I had worked things out. I mean, I already had to add on another goddamn semester since I failed a required seminar class which meant changing my schedule again. Instead of sacrificing a class that I've wanted since freshman year, I'm holding onto it with a tight grip, which means begging to substitute classes and emails and blah. no one taught me how to write emails. How annoying is that? Gen Z gets a lot of shit for not knowing how to do things, but no one teaches us the fundamentals. Screw learning how to do my taxes. There are accountants for that shit. No one around this bitch wants to tell me how to send an email with accidentally slipping my existential dread in there? What's a good subject title that sounds professional with "fuck" in it? Who decided emails would be the professional communication system and didn't add a fucking manual to it?

What's most annoying about my situation is that I knew this was going to happen. Historically speaking, what I want to happen never does. If I'm excited about something, it gets fucked up. Classes especially. I am a biology major with a word minor. Fuck it, I don't know what I study anymore. I really like learning but at this point, I just wanna graduate and I don't care what my degree says. It's just so frustrating that the solution was so simple, and I couldn't figure it out myself. All I had to do was go to an English minor since they require so little and I can half-ass read books and bitch about them in some less than professional essays. I'll be honest, I gave up on MLA format a long time ago. You wanna hear about the motifs in Frankenstein, you're gonna hear me talk about how annoyed I am that I had to finally read the book and talk about how hilarious it is how based on Lord Byron it was.

I don't know where this is going. Every time I try to stop it, another paragraph just happens. Obviously, I need to get this out so I'm just gonna rant until the words fizzle out. I think this whole institution of learning is honestly so stupid. You know how irritating it is to walk around with an F in anatomy on my permanent record and still be able to explain parts of the body to people? How am I not learning? Sure, I googled a lot of answers to tests and often slept through classes, but I'm still retaining stuff. I know where the bursae are in the body. I may not have known what a single bone was named, but I know where they articulated and why by looking at them.

This is the problem with learning shit. Teachers throw textbooks at people and scream words at them and then say, "How did you not learn anything, you stupid gym sock?" Now, I'm walking around feeling stupid because I have an F as if I just didn't learn anything. Work is the same way. I go to work for money. We all know this. I don't care how much I say I like the company and the working environment, I'm just here to pay off my fucking credit card debt and afford to buy Pizza Hut. Yet, I work a lot to make nothing. I work so much that now that it's not busy, I feel lazy for doing nothing. I can go outside and look for more trash since one of the 20 people at the zoo is bound to be a nasty fuck, but it's cold and I now wake up at 9 am to wipe off a clean toilet for the thirtieth time and read books.

I think I'm just a little disillusioned right now. Breaks are supposed to be relaxing, and this hasn't been. This is that feeling when you go outside for the first time in three and a half hours to do your job then come back. You feel weird, as if you're cheating the system by being present and doing nothing. I work now because poverty because ordering delivery because I'm always inside because COVID, yet still can't pay off my debt. It's not even a staggering amount. It's $1200 [and continuously fluctuating because I am the worst at making myself do better], which I could usually make in a month but I'm so lost in my habit of buying stuff with my card that came after this miserable time period.

To be fair, I can't blame 2020 (though I do because societal pressure to not take accountability for shit). Just like these MAGA morons are historically inevitable, so is my predicament that I'm in. I historically like to spend money on things that make me happy and the lack of serotonin from the possibility of the outdoors is being produced by a different type of green. I like my job but I'm also lazy as hell and my bosses no longer being able to pressure me into working with the anxiety that some kid will shit in the middle of the floor of the women's bathroom again has led to a worrying precedent. My tendency to force myself to stay awake coupled with my natural adoration of being awake at night has screwed me to a point where I'm nervous that I can't recover. Plus, the thought of my school shutting down due to another grueling chapter of COVID and all of my classes being remote again open me up to the possibility of having an even longer sentence because of my inability to just be able to take in and spit information like everyone else.

In short, I'm frustrated because the cycle is repeating itself and I was smart enough to make it out of the loop this time and was sorely mistaken.