Savior Sickness by Keiran Elden (New York)

​​It terrifies me how little you care what I think.
The things I feel make people afraid, but when I look through them with a blank stare,
they say that’s scary too.
You speak words that sound nice but reek of lies.

---

Telling me I can talk to you about anything, 
but your eyes burn and twitch when I do. 
Telling me I don’t need to close myself off, 
but I see you white-knuckled when I open up. 
If I were another person, maybe I could make sense of your contradictions.
But accepting your hypocrisy has never come easily to me. 

And still, I say nothing.
I’ve spent a lifetime asking people the golden question--What makes you happy?— 
and I listen to their answers carefully every time.
I’m your passive high achiever, people pleaser, good girl.
My skill is crafting realities to match sharp, aching fantasies. 
Bet it would hurt to learn I’m just as fake as you, I’m afraid--
though my guise serves a different purpose than your vapid mask. 
I lie and degrade myself to prevent anyone from feeling sad, uneasy, anything.
Because it’s okay as long as it’s only me who feels those things.

But I’m sick of being the one who exists only to fix you, and save you, and accommodate you.
All I’ve ever wanted is to be happy, but nobody has ever asked me the golden question 
and stood beside me trying to solve it. 
I’d follow you through hell with our palms pressed together--anything for you—and you like that.
You like me better when I can receive your misery, and not once do you have to hear mine.
I’m a human being, not a receptacle, but you’ve always been too cowardly to accept that. 
Maybe you should push yourself out of your comfort zone for once, 
just so that I can have a moment of honesty. 
Maybe you should try saving yourself, the way that I had to, 
because nobody was all that merciful to me.
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Keiran Elden is a young writer from New York. They have been passionate about writing since childhood, and they strive to create art that is as emotionally sincere as possible. Their work has been recognized and/or published by Bending Genres Journal, Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine, OUT Spoken Magazine, All My Relations, the Austin International Poetry Foundation, and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.