how are you?

i cling by my fingertips to the edge of a yawning hole, desperately trying to scramble up

every news article, every insensitive comment, every death pushes me farther and farther off, until i’m

f

     a

          l

               l

                    i

                         n

                              g

i bite down a scream, try to keep the tears from leaking out

no one else can see the hole: no one else must see my terror

paint on a gilded facade, force a smile, say i’m fine

i don’t need your useless words, i’ll recover on my own

and besides, why am i freaking out anyway,

when my problems are so insignificant?

no, i’ll silence the scream, ignore the endless falling, and i’ll say, in an upbeat tone:

i’m just fine. how are you?

it's hard to remember

the way things used to be

faces that were real, not an image on my screen

trips out of the house without homemade masks

hair ties chafing my ears

going to school, packed classrooms, crowded hallways

a full calendar, knowing what the next 

day

week

month 

will hold

predictability, what's wrong with that?

I'm lucky, I know

but the future is blurry

a question mark

unknown 

Here's mine:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I'm sick of this!

How about you? 

And here's part two:

Why do we have

to stay home all day?

Answer: Because America

Has rules that we have to follow.

Or we'll all be put in prison.

Ok, I can't rhyme that well, so I put that in there for no reason. 

Coronavirus News

Bated breath, waiting

Hour by hour

Every lightbulb a star

Every teardrop a shower

A flick of the wrist

An email sent

A dream destroyed

A permanent dent

A belief in something --

in something unknown

A compulsion to clutch

to that which you own

Suppress your emotions

deep down in your heart

Shut your eyes tightly

so tears will not start

Till all that is left

is a vague sense of sorrow

and a question --

what will happen tomorrow? 

This one's kinda sad, sorry about that. I wrote it about a week ago.

i feel colorblind

because the whole world has shifted into shades of melancholy

nothing is unusually large but i feel so small and at the same time not small enough

to fit into any good hiding spots

instead i swim in an endless tideless ocean

everything is so leadenly still

i seem to always be the exception--

i can’t stop shaking in the static so loud

i feel robotic i’ve been plugged in too long but i can’t stand without music

i feel like one of those contemplative sci-fi stories i’ve been rereading

the artificial intelligence gains sentience,

dreaming of laughing with friends in the sunshine so long it doesn’t feel real anymore

and everything is lost in this fog of insomnia (i haven’t been able to sleep for so long

it’s twisted around into won’t sleep and then back again into can’t sleep)

it’s the opposite of becoming,

it’s laughing because if i didn’t i’d be crying

(i do enough of that already)

it’s trying to keep standing until i can’t

it’s hoping that something changes before that day when i

can’t talk draw smile sleep write stay see

handle it anymore.

i am so stretched thin so scattered

parts of me sprinkled everywhere like a scavenger hunt i’m too tired to solve

and half of them are in places i can’t go anyway

the only place i can go is away,

but that’s fine because it’s the only place i want to be

i can’t walk far enough before it gets dark,

but if i walk until my legs give out, at least i’ll have finally gotten to sleep.

Nearly half of seventh grade

Gone neatly in a snap

Time to fly, and get outside

What's wrong with doing that?

Gotten lucky, could have been

Home in another city

News reports come rolling in

To make my life less pretty 

Dad says one thing, mom says another

And then they change their views

Others get to miss school 

But for me, school days I lose.

Busy Tuesday, class class class

I'm clicking through the links 

I should be glad I'm still alive

But life right now just stinks.