Poem: “Hate Yourself, Don’t”

The slap of concrete, a heel turn.

Ours is a mean garbage scream,

An attack sent inward,

A mess to be cleaned up later,

Left on our dashboards.

An ancestral moan,

Ragged breath and moan again.

We are a footstep,

The slap of concrete,

A heel turn.

We are dead

On apathetic arrival,

Until we live

In those nice apartments

Until we live,

Declared sick

Until we live.

We are living

On each other’s couches

We don’t get off the couch

Until the mailman shakes his head.

Baby, we’re a trash pile

Burning like lungs

& the hallucinations,

Burning until

We remember that it’s

Too hard to live for free

& we aren’t hard.

Baby, we are melting.

We are nothing.

We are garbage.