i’m semi-automatic, my prayer is schizophrenic, but i’ll live on

i started calling myself a poet my sophomore year

of high school, when the lines and stanzas became as real

as the blue veins in my wrists

even still, even still

it was all for aesthetics

though i longed for it to be real

it was colour-graded insanity,

a shell of an identity

poetry, once a hobby, became a sort of anesthetic

tied a ribbon 'round my pain for the beauty of it

let's make panic attacks more poetic

sorry, lost myself to the numbered hearts for a minute

i even found that i'd avoid some things

that maybe didn't look as pretty in ink

sifting through the twisted thoughts that i think

but you don't want to read

about what's really underneath

the metaphors and similes

i know you like to believe

are all there is to the girl with the pen

there's more to see

you see

this writer is an ugly crier

hates the world but burns with desire

to see it all, take it in,

live forever but meanwhile

she's suicidal

without the action

loves her life but worships distraction

in lesser things

computer screens

loathes herself most days

a self-taught expert in acting

like she cares, even though she doesn't

there are no feelings even if she wanted

to feel something for you

some sympathy, "poor you"

a chronic romantic scribbling haikus

from friends to strangers in one afternoon

she bears the weight of her own unbelief

it gets heavy, all the prayers and white teeth

knowing mom can't sleep

because of me?

is it because of me?