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?