Welcome traveler

I’ve noticed your bizarre gestures
Upon this adventure
Into this city of angels
So please, allow me to indulge knowledge upon you

First, always be ready for the new
New hair, new shoes,
New low paying jobs, many bills overdue
Often, you must chose on what is right and what is easy
Enjoy crowded spaces to live in
No privacy, no dignity
I’m only teasing
If you find it pleasing to be with others
Who couldn’t be bothered
To care for one another
Then decipher my words carefully
You see, people prefer belonging
Relationships occurring
Appearing as widespread loving

Secondly, toughing it out through paradoxes
The things you will do
Regrets you will set
Upon this list, you’ll check off most of it I’ll bet
Prepare to run red signal lights
Keepers of angry groans
Because on one of those nights
To avoid any fights
Tardiness can be blamed on the tight work schedule
You had to pull off miracles
Maybe you couldn’t pay that extra tip to that waiter
Perhaps you had to gamble under that table
Labeling the rent as collateral
Being literal to your elongated fable
Of why you had to lose your fingers
Coming out of that sketchy bar
The one with the one eyed gangster
Who prefers to be paid on time for this troubles
You body narrowly missing being within the gravel
Such a travel in the middle of the night
Might not look right to your boss
Who you happened to tell to fuck off

When you had enough calls on your Tuesday dress code
Knowing you had a long yesterday
Sitting at your desk, defeated, saying
“I fucking HATE Mondays”

Lastly, even with all the illegal possible activity
The most of them all
Is the amount you could steal
Not from the rich who couldn’t be inched to care
But from those that do
Who always knew you
Those that were there
The ones within your heart
You decided to part ways
Always paying their dues in energy
Spirited souls only wishing for loving
Things change
You no longer phased, now plummeting farther
Don’t bother filling what might not be there
Do not steal from those treasures
Because beyond measure
The pressure will always be there
But those tears are temporary
The hear heals consistently
Knowing the sun will brighten and rise
On those darken days
As you begin your journey
Worthy traveler
​
I wish you the best of luck.

I don’t know what went wrong. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was my insecurities reaching up through the cracks in the cement, pulling at my ankles. I felt it dragging behind me every time I left my apartment, locking my door behind me. In the shower. Every time I looked in the mirror. I felt it clawing up underneath my skin-tight jeans, sinking like a rock in the pit of my stomach, burning until the smoke rose into my lungs, eventually grabbing at my throat. It grew hands, like claws, ripping, suffocating me.
 
I’d heard of something like this. I’d heard that it was something like a nightmare. That it was possessive, addictive. That it acted like a friend. 
 
I didn’t know that it was like an onion, layer upon layer, doubling in intensity the deeper it got, burning my eyes the closer I looked.  
 
I made a wish one night, as I sat on the front step, alone in absolute silence, that I would be unafraid to know myself. To know what I was capable of. To see myself as I actually was. Then, as I stood and turned to look and see, really see, whatever was behind me, whatever was looming, whatever was clinging, whatever was clawing, whatever the fuck it was that kept me stagnant, I saw that it was something, someone I had seen before, someone I had known, I reached my hands up to grab its neck, to strangle, to sink my nails into and rip the skin, to claw through its flesh. My hands grasping its neck, I watched it writhe, I watched it suffocate. 
 
It was only after this that I recognized my hands had turned into claws. Boney, grotesque. They were connected to me in an unnatural way, a way that didn’t feel real, but now I could see that the neck they were wrapped around like a snake was attached to a jaw with a scar on the chin that I knew, a scar from when I fell from the roof of our plastic car when I was 8, from when my chin hit the cement, when my knees and elbows scraped against the cold, hard driveway. I laid there.
 
That was when I first met this thing. When I first welcomed this thing into my being. I began to inject it into my bloodstream. It grew like a weed, infecting new growth, killing whatever fresh, green grass I found myself standing on. 
 
That was when the nightmares started. When I would cry to my mom desperately trying to describe this feeling, this creature that was clawing at my insides. 
 
This should be illegal.


Author
This is a piece written by Emily Dorsett, one of the core-members of It's Personal.