cognition

therapist talk

god be with you if youre reading this

sometimes i speak with the woman behind me in the kroger check-out line

or the young boy sitting across from me at the dentist

just to remind myself that

i'm alive

and i exist

because in a world that destroys dreams and creativity

souls such as mine are robbed of their essence

and reduced to small talk

and lately it's felt so much like i don't exist,

like reality is a scene before me and i am a hologram in it,

a hologram surrounded by tangible people,

people who love and are loved

people who have one-hundred-ninety-six likes on their instagram picture

and some kid they settled for to call their lover

but for some reason that is not the case for me

my friends have better friends and my parents

have better things to spend their time on

but that's okay -

i am all i need

and i've been writing a book

but i don't have anybody around to water the

seeds of ideas that come to me

or bullshit kind words

to incite motivation, like

"keep writing

because i know you will produce something great"

but that's okay -

i'll be my own motivation

today my dad told me

that my book isn't good enough for the local bookstore to shelve

and i tried to speak with my mother

about the title of it,

but she nodded and said she liked that title

and continued watching t.v.

i hadn't even mentioned a title

my friends feign interest when i speak of story ideas and how

where i hope to end up

is so much different from all i'm used to

but i'm not the type of person to continue speaking with somebody

who's half on their phone

about a topic so important to me

and perhaps that's why i only have one good friend

my ex-girlfriend and i still speak

and she says things like "i don't know how i keep hurting you."

i think she thinks i'm still upset about the break-up

but it's the fact that she's asking that makes me quit responding

because if she loved me anywhere near the amount i had loved her,

she wouldn't be at a loss as to why

the ten digits of her phone number still influx my heart

my cousin came over last night

when the moon was high enough in the sky

that it touched the forest floor beyond my bedroom window

we watched the movie inception and spoke about our interpretation of it all

and it morphed into future-talk,

talk about where we are and where we'll end up

and we made promises to keep in touch,

but i couldn't tell him that i can't make promises

because i break every single one

he finally left at 4a.m.

and i had 3 hours to sleep until school

and i feel like i'm slipping

that all the progress i've made

is eaten away by the loneliness that's becoming my entirety

that doesn't quite make sense to me;

you'd think i'd have gotten used to it by now

but at night i think too hard

about where i should be

where i am not

and for some reason every

single goddamn thought

that enters my mind

leads to alcohol

the other night i ended up in bed with a girl i didn't know

her eyes were blue like her bra that i accidentally stole

(because it was wrapped in my jacket)

i couldn't bring myself to fuck her though

she was too desperate, too in need of the makeshift love i had to offer

and frankly it turned me off

at this point i'm so used to numbness

that i didn't notice her nails on my back

until i looked in the mirror the next morning

i guess things are just rough as of late

because i'm losing myself while trying to find myself

and i'm trying to be successful in a home and in a town

so goddamn accustomed

and okay with

mediocrity

but none of this matters

right?

because one day i'll be where i want to be,

shining with the stars,

and i'll look back at this town

and my parents

and the girl i used to love

and the girl with the desperate eyes

and the dumpster i threw her bra in to

and i'll just laugh