we are liars. we are liars, me myself and i. we are all liars. we lie to each other, we manipulate each other, gaslight each other and tear each other's eyes and hair out and leave bruises on each other. always lying, always hiding, always running away. oh, how cowardly we are, when there are people dying out there, dying slowly as the wars and floods killed them slowly. how pathetic you are, being sad after all the times people came to confide in you about their stories, their stories of their encounters with pain. of the times when they hurt so bad they forgot their name, of the times when they cried and passed out for days with no one to check on them. of the times when they were mocked, humiliated, and scolded. of the times when they were too much for even the rope they hung on the ceiling, when they were locked away from their freedom in death back into the prisons of life.

i guess that's why i want bad things to happen to me. because i always feel so horrible but i have no reason to be. even now, especially now. so i want bad things to happen to me. i want to know what cutting my arm feels like, what drowning feels like what losing a home feels like what being insane feels like. because i am selfish, i am a liar, my pain is pathetic like my heart. my heart, my pathetic heart bruised by my own lies. i guess that's why. i want this horrible feeling to be justified by something truly horrible.

because with all those stories people tell me, the stories of their pain; in comparison, how pathetic mine is. a story not worth writing.

so i'll write theirs. i guess that's what my poetry is about, writing about those truly lost and broken. i never knew what my words meant before. i think i know now.