Run
The thousand yard stare is sitting in a swivel chair, threatening to ruin everything that makes the flag red, white, and blue. I've been sitting like a bird in a cage inside my room, letting strangers dictate what I feel. Letting the weight of the world control everything I do. Poetry stems from hopelessness, I think. And hatred stems from fear. A fear of not being enough for anything, or anyone, but especially for the person who looks back at you in the mirror. I thought I just hadn't felt okay in a long time, but truthfully, I don't know if I ever have. The nights pass by so slow, and I feel like a sailor who didn't realize they were afraid of the ocean until it was all they'd ever known. Being alive in the modern age feels like a wound you know you can never heal from. All those coping mechanisms that nurtured me have lost their effectiveness. Even the light that burns from escapism has dimmed, and I'm a weary moth uncertain if the fire is something worth following now. I don't know where to go.
Home, I think. I want to go home, but it's become a distant memory that's slipping away from me faster than I can catch up to it. I can't even remember what it felt like not to feel like this. Like the world is just some evil place I'm always trying to get away from. I wish I'd paid more attention when we learned about the past that's in front of us now. I wish my body was a sacred temple no man had the power to make a down payment on. I put my worries into a poem, but it just burns another hole through me. God, my blue jeans fit a little looser these days. And I'm starting to think you're as real as the happiness of my country. Which has grown lackluster, next to nothing, a problem we can't fix with faith alone. America is shaped like a gun. And god only knows.
I'm too angry to run from it this time.