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.
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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. |
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