This is everything.
The culmination of desire and despair.
This is midnight coffee runs and
filterless cigarettes that leave me choking.
This is being too self-involved and greedy
but just not caring.

I’d destroy this clock face if it meant
you’d stay another day.
But you won’t.
Despite my best attempts to not care,
you still continue to disappoint me.
So I search for peace in the words of Ginsberg and Kesey
... the usual heretics.
And I come out of my daze into
self-loathing and nihilism.

Yet I can’t seem to let go,
Because my parents taught me to
care about this world.
My momma said to pray for the lost souls
and my daddy told me to look for beauty
in negativity.

So once again I’ll push down the
anger and disgust,
because I want to live up to your expectations
of a little girl
growing up in a little town.
But for once I wish we would leave
the dreaming to someone else.