I don't care for Facebook friends or Instagram followers, I don't want to see my contacts on TikTok, but I do wish I had Goodreads friends.

As an emotionally distraught woman, how dare you call me emotional???

And isn't this fascinating? This little thing we call dreams.

Sometimes I like to text instead of talking in person because in text I can act kind and confident and interested.

Just because I like birding and Goodreads is my most used app doesn't mean I'm an old woman. I'm just a kid with the spirit of an old woman keeping me captive.

(Pls send help she might convince me to start needle-point next)

"My, what large pockets you have, miss!"

Said literally no one ever.

I want larger pockets.

Big enough to carry books.

Walls can be painted, frames can be put up, carpets can be laid out, decorative pillows can be tossed, and blankets can be tucked. But I will never be 17 years old again, decorating my childhood bedroom and dreaming of leaving. Once the walls are bare and the floor is cleared, I won't be able to go back.

This space will echo, the ceiling whispering every story it witnessed because it can not hold my secrets any longer.

And I realized that every bit of pain I'd felt since then had been labled as discomfort. Because dying had not been painful, just uncomfortable, so something as small as a paper cut could not possibly be real pain.

PLEASE LOVE ME. For in this moment I feel unlovable, and in this moment I will stay.

I find myself alone in my childhood home once again. And as a look out the darkened window I relive the moments that shaped me.

I recall sitting in this very same place at seventeen, my father back in the hospital, my mother gone to be with him. And as I recall, this was the moment that I realized that this was not at all unusual. It was just the way life was. And I wanted badly to tell someone what I now knew, but I realized that I had no one to tell. I was utterly alone.

School would not resume until Monday, and by then, my story would have no meaning, and I would not see purpose in telling my teachers. It would be yet another experience I told only to myself in the privacy of a house vacant of all things; parents, company, warmth, love, and purpose.

And as I sit here in this place reminiscent of childhood, I come to a final realization for the night; I was never in company, and so I learned to keep company limited to myself.

Proud owner of precariously low dopamine levels and a fully healed industrial piercing.

So.... when does being a poet start healing my soul? Cause I've been at it for ages, and I still feel lost and crazy as if my words mean nothing and I want that feeling to go away. When does the poetry start loving the poet?

While you celebrated the snow days, I cried in my room, begging God to melt the cold away so that I could be free.

Remember that for some kids, the eight hours they spend at school might be the only eight hours they feel loved.

(Check on your friends.)

YOU WOULD BE SO PROUD IF YOU SAW HOW FAR I'VE COME.

Maybe I won't be anything when I grow up, but at least I'll have a bunch of badass piercings.

I await my brothers return. Anxious.

Not for seeing him, but for the feelings I know I should feel but I don't feel that.

I love my brother but never missed him.

How cruel am I?

Today at 2:47, just 45 minutes before school was released, we were put on lockdown. We were not allowed to leave our classrooms until 3:57.

I wasn't afraid though.

Not because I'm fearless or because I think I'm invincible.

Because this is America, and this is normal. How odd it is to be living the American dream.