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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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![]() I am a watcher, through four panes and silver screens. The bad days are not like in the movies. I still rise from bed and drift to and fro, like a middle-class phantom. I call them my "sad days." All the while, the world, oh the world,
it passes me by from my window. I am the center of the universe, not out of arrogance, but like the eye of a hurricane: a black hole of stillness, a refusal of action, a singularity, solemn serenity, a watcher-- a watcher of clouds that drift me on by. My life is a compilation of shower grout, half-melted snow, and hangnails that I'm too afraid to fully tear off. My head is full of ideas that never convey on the page. I write under the crushing weight of an audience who does not exist. I imagine each poem, perfectly mournful, mournfully imperfect, as the one remnant of my existence people centuries from now will remember me by. I exacerbate my sadness to make something worthwhile. I am raw so people will call me raw. I put my feelings into metaphors to make them seem smarter and profound. These are not metaphors; this is not a poem. If it was worth the pen strokes, I'd be an elegy. If it was worth the brush strokes, I'd be a masterpiece. But the "sad days" are not painted in blues or greys, as they say, but in the morose browns of my shower tiles and dead skin. I have found that when I cry, no one stops and watches; hear me sigh like an apparition, fogging up the one-way glass of my pain. My tears aren't eye-catching, nor are they worth their weight in gold. They melt quickly like slush, dregs of last week's snow, pierced by grass green blades of indifference: seven days ago fallen, six days ago forgotten. Grief is rarely, if ever, worth the strain of immortalization. And my sadness, my sadness, dim under its umber glow, has never posed well for a picture; brown has never been my color, and God knows that my mother bore an ugly crier with an Achilles glint in his eye. Comments are closed.
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Unless otherwise noted, all pictures used are open-source images in the public domain. Archives
September 2023
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