sunday scaries

the waves are crashing into me, of who i used to be, of who i am yet to become. today i looked at the faces that love me, and wondered if they like me? do they even like me? if i was a bit harder to reach, a bit harder to understand, a bit harder to access, if they’d work their way to me, or if I’m just easy, available. maybe they love me. maybe they like me. maybe they hate me but they’re entertained. they seek content. they seek connection. they just want to watch. maybe i’m abided without question and with one wrong move i turn to dust at their feet. maybe i’m the liqour that burns their throat but once i’m in their veins, it makes them feel good. i’m the euphoria before the climax, or the feeling of regret just after. maybe i’m the glue that congeals them to others that’s starting to break down, peeling edges of wallpaper freeing itself from the sun bleached walls. i’m a performer on the online stage, a jester in their court. i’m someone who they expect something from. i’m someone they don’t know. i’m perfect. i’m brutal. i’m weak. i want to be wild. i want to run without shoes. i want to scrape my knees and bleed and gush and cry. i don’t want to be procured, pristine, in artificiality. i want to scream into the pitch dark and hear what cries back. i want to be wrong without judgement. i want to be vindicated. i want to pull out my teeth and see how my toothless smiles shines back to them. i’m their little dancer, fawning on myself to make them love me, my darkness creeping through behind the door, stretching like the babadook. my real self is gnawing the back of my eyelids. my real self is hidden behind a thick veneer of filters. i want to shed them like snakeskin and feel my moist, milky, newborn back against the tide. i don’t want to be the one who bends. the clock is aching at my obsolescence. it’s time to go back to square one. uninstall instagram.