April Madness - 2025

familiarity leads to insolence
which leads to screaming matches
in the bathroom doorway
and leads to spilled chemicals
staining the tile floor
and painting my skin blue.

it leads to fallen stars
lying broken at the doorsteps
and choking hazards in my
week-old mcdonalds meal
i meant to eat but forgot about.

kind of like how you forgot me,
standing small and shriveled
in the doorframe, dwarfed by
your voices alone. it leads to
hospital visits and disgusted faces
treating acid burns on my forearms.

familiarity leads to insolence.
it leads to forgetting your daughter
and making all the wrong kinds of decisions.
love me at my highs, ignore me at my lows.
i’m just the dog barking at your door.
familiar with its bite, insolent in its barks.
you yell at it to shut up and it complies.

we surround ourselves with chaos
because that’s what we’re familiar with.
we see the world through rose-tinted glasses,
never the grime, the sweat, the blood.
we reach for the most distant of stars,
even though we should be reaching for ourselves.

i guess that’s what makes us human,
wrapped up in our faults and failures.
we bury skeletons in our closests and call them roses,
it’s all just symptoms of being human.