convinced nobody wants either of us to be there.
we’ve heard we’re articulate in front of an audience but now
we get stage fright
just walking up to a circle of people that love us
because how could they
love both of us?
love me and all of my ugly?
in a conversation, we’re figuring out how to be in a conversation
and in the one I’m having with myself, I’m fighting with my sad who found anger on the way out the door when I made them leave the bedroom and all their other sads.
My sad has sads
a collection of them
posters all tacked up to the drywall
(so many you can’t see the blank space between them).
like an obsessive teenager,
my sad gazes at the wall
of sads as if they were members
of their favorite
boy band.
my sad likes that
the other sads look like him
(a little too much, if you ask me)
It’s not that my sad wants to be them when he grows up,
he just can’t see past his mouth,
past his trying hands.
when you’re stuck, now
is a lifetime.
In this lifetime,
my sad takes up so much space
takes the aux cord when I’m driving
the covers when I’m sleeping
and the limelight in an argument
the whole room
when I’m not careful.
so I’m standing there, at this event,
either a bit too careful or not careful enough
with loved ones I’m trying to remind my brain are loved ones.
i’m never alone
cause it’s me and a mosaic of my big emotions that become increasingly bigger every
time it’s my turn to speak
because I don’t know who’s on deck
or who is up on the mic.
I don’t know which emotion will come out of my lips.
so I grow anxious on my anxious
it sprouts from nothing into an ivy
that dims my facial expressions and
causes me to forget most of the words I know
I keep landing on “cool”
and “interesting”
the anxious fights back
bigger than me most days
It’s not hard-
I’m tiny
just bones and worry
my sad and my anxious enter a toxic relationship which spreads upwards onto my vocal cords
now here I am
language-less
and stumbling on my existence
as a keeper of my sad’s sads
of my anxious’s anxiousness
of my anger who, remember, hitched a ride here, too.
I don’t think a single one of them feel
understood
(most especially by me).
it’s hard to listen
to someone
who won’t stop repeating themself but if someone won’t stop repeating themself maybe
it means you weren’t
listening to begin with.
maybe my emotions have wisdom
I don’t hear because I’m too busy chastising them for being.
maybe one day I will line my own walls with posters of each them
look up in admiration
at my collaborators not my combatants,
like angels
with my own trying hands.
& 