Survive: Collected Poems

I Am The Universe

i.
I was born into chaos.
My greeting was a flurry of doctors and nurses around me,
Pressing down on my newborn chest,
Struggling to force air into my tiny lungs
And bring color to my frost-blue skin.
That pressure never left.
Its purpose was to force me to breathe,
To force me to live in this world full of cheating and death.
Now I hate it for that reason.
Now instead of bringing me life, it makes it hard to breathe.
If I never would have lived, then I would never have to die.
Nonexistence is the key to immortality.
I'm sorry that I think this way.
I'm sorry that I spend hours dreaming about leaving this world in the same way I entered it.
We are newborns when we are born and we are newborns when we die.
We will never understand.
Why do we feel this way?
Will it ever stop?
Does anyone really care?
Maybe. But we will never understand for sure.

ii.
I never liked Shakespeare.
And by that I don't mean what you think I mean.
It seems a strange thing to say.
I quote the Bard all the time.
"Lord, what fools these mortals be."
And all that.
What I mean is that I enjoy what he has to say.
But I do not enjoy reading more than a few lines together.
Not when the verses are written to mimic the rhythm of a beating heart.
It's funny that I am so disgusted by the sound of a heart bringing blood and life
When not that long ago I was comforted and healed by hearing the sound of her heart.
Maybe that's why I hate it now.
I barely remember it.
The memories are fading fast,
And I both want them to stay and leave at the same time.
But I say it was not that long ago because I am still a newborn.
I will always be a newborn.
I'm sorry that I hate the sound of a heart,
When the flow of the words on the page make it sound so close to my own.
I'm sorry that I'm so resistant to something meant to be so close to nature.
I retaliate against living,
And yet I want to die because I crave life.
This makes no sense.
I am a walking contradiction.
I am both calm and chaotic,
Happy and sad,
Alive and dead.
I am afraid to live,
But I am afraid to die.
And so I am here,
Perpetually stuck between the two.

iii.
It's fitting that I am such a tangled mess of opposites.
I come from the universe,
And so I am like the universe.
I am everything at once.
I am breathtaking beauty,
Filled with explosions of color,
And I am an empty vacuum of nothing but darkness,
Sucking in everything that gets too close,
And  attracting them so completely
That they never come out the other side.
I am so close to the sun that I may vaporize you unless you shield yourself,
And I am so far away that I have not felt warmth since I exploded into existence.
But I do not want to be the universe.
I do not want to be a contradiction.
Being a contradiction is exhausting.
I'm sorry that I don't want to be the universe.
I'm sorry that I only want to be me.
I'm sorry that I do not know who I am
Because all I have ever been is the universe.

iv.
Who am I?
I have never known.
Maybe that's why I'm so obsessed with personality quizzes.
I have some desperate hope that they will tell me who I am.
Am I more Anna or Elsa?
Am I a crime novel or a fantasy novel?
Am I a sunrise or a sunset?
The universe tells me that I am both.
I am everything.
I am the universe.
But I do not want to be the universe.
I will always be a newborn.
But I do not want to be.
I want to understand.
I want to know.
Who am I?

v.
She used to tell me I had galaxies in my eyes.
When speaking about me to her friends,
She called me "The Girl With The Galaxies In Her Eyes."
Half of me said it was sweet.
It was romantic.
When she finally told me,
I melted into her with a kiss.
But the other half of me did not want to have galaxies in my eyes.
I do not want to be the universe.
I do not want the ultimate contradiction to be tied to me forever.
I would rather rip the galaxies out of my eyes and leave them far behind.
Who am I?
The galaxies in my eyes do not tell me.
If I am so in love with the universe,
Its breathtaking beauty
And explosions of colors,
Then why can I not love myself?
Why do I not want to be the universe?
I cannot accept that the beauty and the contradictions are one.
Outside of my body they are beautiful.
I wish to fly and be among them,
But I do not want stardust in my veins.
I yearn to be simple.
I yearn to know myself.
I'm sorry that I cannot fly.
I'm sorry that I am in the universe
And yet so far away.
Who am I?
Where am I?

vi.
I am everywhere and nowhere.
I am everything and nothing.
I am screaming and I am silent.
I am Anna and Elsa.
I am a crime novel and a fantasy novel.
I am a sunrise and a sunset.
I cannot change these things.
And I am tired.
Please don't go.
You are my only constant.
Stay a while and let me rest my head on your shoulder.
I am tired.
But I have no time to be tired.
I am the universe.
I can never stop,
Never rest.
All there is for me are more contradictions
And breathtaking beauty.
I am an explosion of colors.
I am a vacuum of nothing but darkness.
I am a contradiction.
I am the universe.