reprise

it seems like the reprise of my life.
all these days i’m pouring out my feelings
into word documents,
with some fancy title.dox
hoping that maybe this sequence of syllables
is the right one,
and maybe this metaphor is the perfect metaphor
and maybe if i just write one more
line with no capital letters
everything in my life will be better.
 
so remedy this sadness-
here, press tab and create a new stanza
for people to analyze.
it’s supposed to be abstract but i think
i might be lying to myself when i said
my poems aren’t about you and how much
i wish you were mine.
i said they’re about emotions, to make
them more universal, to make them more subtle,
to make them less about teenager girl struggles
between pink or purple scrunchies and
crushes on boys who either live across the country
or don’t smile back when we make eye contact.
 
but if writing poems at 3pm is my therapy,
then ignoring my feelings for you
is my Rorschach test.
i love psychology but i think it’s
messed up sometimes.
it’s an illness to be sad,
it’s an illness to not want to
go to work or talk to your friends,
it’s an illness to feel scared in crowds.
but, for God’s sake, don’t mention it!
don’t talk about how you can cover a scraped
knee with a Band-Aid but the best you can do
for depression is an orange bottle of pills.
don’t talk about how i write love poems
for boys who don’t think about me
but i pretend there’s a whole spaceship of
cute boys waiting for me to look up to the sky
and call out to them.
don’t mention how girls are treated differently
in society,
oh God, not again, it’s another one of
those poems.
it’s another feminist teenage girl
who thinks she understands society
as a whole and calls men “patriarchal.”
ok, so let’s not talk about it.
what are we not allowed to talk about?
depression, unrequited love,
society, patriarchal men.
 
just make a new stanza, maybe this
one will wash down easier.
remember to not
mention any of those things.
don’t talk about how you want
to kiss a boy for the first time-
don’t talk about how you think vaping is idiotic-
don’t talk about how unfair it is that
teenage boys aren’t treated as if they’re
sticks of dynamite preparing for an explosion.
don’t mention the way you keep your phone app
on keypad so you can dial 9-1-1 if necessary.
don’t mention that you’ve spent another night
daydreaming about bikinis you would never wear.
 
just don’t mention it.
this poem is just about poetry.
it’s just a nice poem that people should
enjoy.
 
it’s 3:30.
i wrote this poem but i still feel incomplete.
i think i’m missing a few puzzle pieces
but i won’t mention it
because this isn’t that kind of poem.