Spreading people thin over lines of schedules, cutting out the extra parts where they don't fit into tight grids, where I'm from I never knew people fully I only knew the parts that served me as decoration as background noise as I went along my way and had to rush home working so hard so I could afford to buy the food I don't grow and so I can pay for therapy because I have no time to breathe to be happy so I do it in boxes with price tags per hour and I save up so I can cut price tags off clothes I don't need just so I can watch reality TV long into the night to fill the hole where my conscience would go if I let my mind follow the price tag that that fell into dumps that stacked higher and higher with greed as we take futures away from our children because our sight is as short as next month's deadlines but today I'm calling self care day as I shop for myself and soak my toes in gallons of clean water that so many people in the world can't afford because I'm told I deserve it and I scroll through online shops with toes in bubble bath that starves the oceans of our own life blood because we want things but don't want the work of them even though the things we want in our souls take a beautiful type of work and the things we don't want we are told to want and we have holes bigger than we understand so we listen because maybe with the right car house dress therapist promotion accomplishment the hole would be filled so we work to pay to fill these holes but the working makes deeper holes because it feeds a system that has sickness at its route and everything we do makes bigger holes until I bring the tomato seeds to the garden and dig holes in the soil and fill them how they're meant to be filled and I say sorry and thank you to every seed all at once because I don't know what else to say to make up for a lifetime of shoving bites under my tongue from plastic wrapping because my own life was too big too important to care and now I am struck to the bone with the humility of how unimportant it is and I want to spend my life filling your holes that we make in mines in gaps in ecosystems where species should still exist but they are on my shelf and in my drawers and all around me as I live a life with sickness in my veins it is no wonder we are all anxious it is not about finding more cures to patch up holes it is about filling them when I cry my tears into this garden it gives me life while it gives life to others this is my quiet rebellion I have nowhere to post it nowhere to gather accolades I don't want them I don't want to be known my only goal was to be famous and now I don't want to be it doesn't make any sense it's a broken compass I want to love and only love but I didn't know any of this yet and I still couldn't look at myself or the sun in the eyes so I looked down at cracks on sidewalks and got angry at strangers blocking my path walking slowly as I have places to be like this chair in a coffee shop painted green as it strips the green off the trees it clears to make room for crop to make room for blood of those overworked underpaid but I don't care yet I just want to make the weight of my day a little lighter while it makes my soul heavier and I sit across a friend I only half-know while I check a box that I saw her this month so I can get that out of the way and I don't have anything to speak about except this constant fear nipping at my ankles to move and run and do and work and I can't look at myself in the eyes still or take a full breath in so instead I spread gossip in empty words for empty ears because it's easier to make tornados than look at the ground unobstructed so I keep making bigger problems for myself and elevating drama because I don't understand this hole in me I just want to come up with stupid reasons it's there.

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