Feels like yesterday I was turning sixteen

So much has changed so fast and it feels like no time has passed at all

Time’s not the same anymore, days feel like weeks but weeks shrink to hours, flashes of bright memory between blanks left by hours of classes and practice rooms

The kid I used to be knew how long it took between birthdays, now getting older doesn't feel like it's worth waiting for

Life used to crawl, waiting to really begin, before I was sixteen and it sped forward as fast as the car I got in to go as far from home as I could.

It's been four years and it feels like days

I haven't seen my mom in months, my childhood bedroom is sitting empty in the house

My brother’s thirteen now, he's growing up without me and he hasn't texted

I don't know how every adult lives like this knowing they can't go back

I'm almost twenty and in my mind I'm sixteen, I'm still so young but I feel ancient

My face is covered in lines, aren't you supposed to be still pretty at twenty?

I guess it just means I've smiled

You know the feeling when you start thinking and just can't stop again

You fall into a tunnel that has no end because it had no start

You've always been here and there's no escape

It's just life and there's no choice but to keep living or die

No alternate option or restart button if you don't like the hand you drew

No option to stop thinking once you've started

You can train for years but your mind will never be empty, just shift in focus

I'm not scared to die but I'm scared that I'll never live again

This life will be the only one I ever have and what if I'm not doing enough with it

Then what if I just don't have as much potential as some other lives and I'm in a tunnel just thinking and thinking while other people are running free in vivid picture brains with infinite possibilities and my whole life is just one string of words until I remember their life is the only one they have too

I guess I'm mostly sad that this existence is the only one I'll ever get to know

I'll never get to grow up any other way than how I did

and I'll never look in the mirror and see any other face but mine

And the tunnel doesn't start and doesn't end

It's so full of everything I've experienced in my life but it never meets with any other tunnel

There will never be anything here seen by any eyes but mine and all the memories are colored by the same lens and all the wants are ones I determined for myself long ago and now they're so built in I can't just stop living the way I always have

I can stand still or walk or run but I can never leave

Even if I leave I won't be able to go anywhere else, see anyone else's existence, I'm just gone and that's it and my lonely tunnel will still be there, not that anyone would know because they can't see it, they're trapped in themselves too

Now I'm in bed and the world's moving around me and I'm up and moving too but I'm still stuck here

I want to leave and know something else but this is all I'll ever know

These stone walls of memories, these flashes of desires, always the empty spaces where there should be doors leading to other tunnels

Let us know each other

Please

Nothing.

I guess I have nothing to do but keep going with this life that's mine

Keep trying to find my way into other people's realities, keep knowing I'll never really make it, just like they can't see mine

Please come in, I want you to know me

Let our lives intersect

Twine as close as they can

They'll never touch and never trade lenses but they can tint each other with the other’s color

if my life was a book

I don't think I'd want to read it

the plot would be repetitive

and I'd get too bored to finish

a cycle of me loving,

me caring,

me wanting (really, deeply)

then me on my own and doing nothing

the moment I shut the door to my bedroom

always the same thing

shutting down, stepping away,

closing my eyes

sinking down in a puddle of blankets and guilt

until I work myself into a panic

because why am I still doing nothing

I could do anything I want

(a minute ago I wanted so much)

now I can't

seem

to care

I don't want to live this anymore

still I know it'll always be the same

she looks so perfect

under the lights.

beautiful lovely glowing

my skin is writhing aching itching pining

when I reach up to scratch it it peels away

revealing my too many lies

to them

to me

lies saying I can do this.

.

.

oh. you poor thing.

you actually thought you could.

be like her.

shining inwardly beneath that spotlight

look at you cowering

there on the edge

trying hopelessly to fill the space

the lights burning through you

carve out a silhouette in the shape of a girl

empty hollow shadowed.

wanting

wanting to be her

wanting her

she's so pretty

I'm so.

.

.

clawing scratching fading

stripped of my skin under the lights

my deepest raw bleeding organs

spilling out in front of an audience

flakes of skin drifting off to the floor to reveal a miserable someone

pretending she could be powerful

part of something.

as if.

tissue and tendons,

water and blood,

bones hanging limply in their cushions of muscle,

heart beating numbly in its skeletal cage.

eyes take in light, blindly process

the stream of information we call the world

after all music is nothing more than sound

after all laughter's made of nothing but air

circuits and wires,

a perfect machine,

each part is calculated to keep us surviving

nothing more than electric waves in our brain

just a steady stream of blood through our heart

and somehow, impossibly, it all comes together

and it turns into something new called

life

I think I'm

starving

the more I eat

the hungrier I am

there's no satisfaction

while I drown myself

in sugar, salt and oil

my body deteriorates

and I tell myself

I'm starving

and I want just a little

more

The storm is gone,

and in its wake,

the earth seems too green to be true-

all verdant trees, their leaves aglow

and dripping with green dew.

It's bright and warm and alive again

with newborn sunlight piercing through

the tired clouds we left behind

I never liked the color green,

but today, I think, might change my mind.

Wait while I tear this silvered cords of empty enjoyment

Out from their resting place in my brain.

Wait while I rip the stubborn strands that hold my eyes

To their post on the screen

I'd look away,

Look at you,

Look at the world,

And at my life that's sitting

Waiting on my bedside table

But I'm afraid they're buried in too deep now

If I look away, these

Silver cords and

Smiling faces and

Empty jokes and

Dulling colors would

Tear my brain out with them.

So wait, while I rot here.

Won't you wait?

Just a moment?

While I pluck my thoughts out

One by one

There goes anger

Care and love

Joy goes next

Off runs sadness

Look who's left now

Apathy

Numbness.

At least my eyes aren't tied to the screen anymore

No, I think

They're there by choice now

Look so gold in the sunlight

The color of love

Joy

Life

I've always been told

Eyes are windows to the soul

So it's made me wonder

Why mine are so blue