The dissonance of life echoing through the cluttered hallways in my brain is an unending cacophony reminding me that I'm doing it all wrong.

It keeps stacking up on top of you until there's no way to get out from under it, pressing down until you feel your bones creaking.

Everyone seems to have goals and purposes and motives but I can't figure out who I am or what I want.

My toxic father follows me through my life.

His evil seeps into every pore of my existence.

I cannot eradicate his stench no matter how hard I scrub and scrape and run.

You want someone to love, someone to love you but he shows up to hate you and break you down and tear apart your soul in the skins of someone else.

Everytime, you tell yourself it will be different but underneath the mask it's all the fucking same.

I hate you until the earth incinerates and there is nothing left.

I hate your lies and your teeth grinding into the back of my skull; your poison in everything. There is nothing left that is free of your cold grasp.

The fake smiles. See, look. Everything is fine. Don't blink twice. 100. 1000 he will never die.

And I will keep writing shity poems, hoping my hate will curse him with ill fortune and praying to gods that probably don't exist that he will die soon.

A balloon is filled, and then more, and more, and again more. You are waiting for it to pop, you hold your breath as you hesitate and wait.

The gun is loaded, the safety released, finger on the trigger, resting against it, ready. You wait and you hold your breath, any minute now, any second, keep waiting.

The plane will land, lower and lower and lower. The wheels will eventually touch, they have to, but you are still going lower and lower.

You're deep underwater. Hold your breath or you will die. The water will consume you. Hold it in, but you can't control it, there is a balloon expanding against your ribs, pushing out on the walls of your chest, they will surely explode.

Not yet, not yet, not yet, not yet, not yet like the song my daughter listens to about black socks.

I follow along a bread crumb path of musical notes,

Left for someone else.

Silence and side eyes is my only form of communication.

I'm out of touch and never on time.

So I listen in secret to the songs you live by.

I am the dog left at the shelter,

Because I went to the wrong home.

The wrong daughter for the wrong mother.

I'm too aggressive and I bite,

I don't beg for your attention and wait patiently, My bark is too loud, I say what nobody wants to hear, I'm always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

I'm the wrong shoe on the wrong foot. I'm too practical, no frills, too sturdy, not delicate or paper thin. Not elegant or feminine, embarrassing because I take up space and I'm direct.

I feel ugly when I'm emotional or vulnerable, I will not know my place. My worth is not based on my weight. I will not drown myself in drugs or alcohol, to cover up my insecurity so that I am broken and you can fix me.

I am an alien from outer space trying to blend in enough so they will love me for who I really am.

I was just trying to get home and now I'm stuck in a world where I will always be foreign and misunderstood.

My favorite picture of my father is his mugshot. He didn't get to choose whether or not it was taken, and that "how dare you" expression is carved so deeply into his forehead wrinkles. For once he's being held accountable for his actions even though he claims the accusations are false. When he can't deny that something happened he's got an arsenal of excuses to use as evidence of his innocence.

Like earth and and air and toast...but more, the smell calls you from across years and through tv screens. Screaming to not be fogotten. It's so easy easy easy to fall back in. Just touch the paper and feel how smooth and warm, it fits. Your mind can see nothing else, angry that it won't go away. The sensations are seared into the fleshy layers of your weak brain, smoke soothing and sifting into the walls of your lungs, stop thinking and breathe, again and again.

Pinned to the table like a moth in the back of the biology lab, dried out and older than most of the professors. Small pieces flake away when the shelves rattle, but I don't care. My face crawls like a million ants are eating their way inwards, and these shallow breaths are useless. I have no power, it has been taken from me with one needle after another, my body no longer is allowed its purpose. But somehow, as they cut through my flesh, you are here, and I hear your scream pierce the air. There is nothing else.

What do you see? Do you hear? Do you feel?

I feel nothing, and then everything. I am a cold and silent tomb deep in the earth.

I am a thousand voices screaming to be heard simultaneously.

Do I even exist? Can you see me? When my lips move do words come out? Do they make sense? Do the words I form in my mind take hold in reality, or does your blank expression point to the truth of it? Do the words I speak and the words you hear meet and mirror? or is there a vast chasm that no sentence can bridge.

Title: Do You See

Genre: Poetry

Age range: 18 and up

I've been writing poetry for a long time. I'd love to know how the public would receive my work, but would like to use a pen name if I ever published anything. I write about mental health a lot, as it's the field I'm pursuing career wise. It's not always sunshine and rainbows.

What do you see? Do you hear? Do you feel?

I feel nothing, and then everything. I am a cold and silent tomb deep in the earth.

I am a thousand voices screaming to be heard simultaneously.

Do I even exist? Can you see me? When my lips move do words come out? Do they make sense? Do the words I form in my mind take hold in reality, or does your blank expression point to the truth of it? Do the words I speak and the words you hear meet and mirror? or is there a vast chasm that no sentence can bridge.