1.
My internal monologue is an expert in hypotheticals.
If you want 52 ways to mess up basic social interaction
Or all the methods for potentially failing an exam
I have you covered.
My life is a battle of trying to tell my brain to shut up
To think rationally and focus for ten minutes
So please don’t feed it with talk of politics
Policies that don’t yet exist, may never exist.
Maybe some part of you feels better
Imagining the world
Filled with hate and ruin and grief,
But let’s just take the punches as they come.
If we spend our resources fighting
Shadow puppets of your imagination
We’ll have nothing left with which to face reality.
2.
Sometimes I can almost forget.
If I turn off the news for awhile
Plug in my headphones and close my eyes
I can slip into a false sense of comfort.
I can drown out the images of protests
The fears and emotional exhaustion
That haunt every person who’s different.
For now, I still have that privilege.
But how many days,
I can’t help but wonder,
Before men with too much power
and too little sense
Destroy the country I was raised to believe was great?
3.
The ghost of my younger self sits on my shoulder.
She wants to read the news.
“No,” I whisper. “You can’t.”
I don’t know how to tell her, how to explain.
The second it escapes my lips I feel guilty
like there’s a leaden weight on my chest.
She’s so young, so innocent, so hopeful.
She thrives off daydreams
Of girlfriends and treehouses
And a bright future
filled with love and acceptance.
Who am I to show her that ten years later
We’re still sliding backwards?
