thank you and goodbye

kat, april 14 2024

All the girls I’ve ever met are in love with misery

I think I am too

between how much I talk about wanting to cry

between how much I pointedly do not cry

All the girls I read about are miserable

or want to be

between their romanticized ideals of abuse and

dreamed imagery of the battered girl

with her mascara running and her eyelashes fluttering

coquette, they call it, being coquettish, cute,

and I want to believe there is something cute and shy about my misery,

as my hair gets greasier,

as my friend checks on me every day,

making sure I’ve taken my pills,

and I lie sometimes, because I do not want to worry them

but I already have

and knowing you’ve worried someone is like stabbing yourself in the back

the lies and the pained reality etched into your back

like a careful incision with the precision of a surgeon

all cold and sterile and latex gloved and masked

and I mask myself outside every day

fear a second skin to me

my imagined misery a blanket

like the guitar strums of tortured artists ringing through my earbuds and into my ears

because to hear oomori seiko sing the words of idols,

“I & YOU & I & YOU & I”,

in such a pained voice, like a dying cat,

despite all the people she’s harmed

despite how her abuse hurts me too

even though I was just a fan

and I’ll never know her

I felt like I did, through her music

and I still felt the stab of her betrayal etching itself into my back

when it had no right to

when she was busy beating her words into her poor idols

sharpening her teeth

with the words sung by idols

two years before I opened my eyes to this world

screaming and stuck in my mom’s uterus

my sister waiting impatiently for me to be broken free

because I lacked the fury to break myself open at age nothing

and at nineteen, almost twenty,

I realize,

with delicate guitar strums in my ears,

the threat of the hospital over me again,

as my hands shake while I type,

and quiver,

and tremble,

as I hold out my hand in front of my therapist and inadvertently show him I hadn’t actually eaten the snacks I said I ate before the session,

that I still lack the fury

to rage against my own misery

to drown in my own prescriptions

to avoid and run from my responsibilities

while creating more for myself

because I want so desperately to be seen

and this is a depressing poem

this is my first poem

and I want to quote oomori seiko

to end things neatly

but she has never ended things neatly

so I won’t either

I think about all the musicians that have shaped my identity

because I lack the fury to shape my own identity just yet

and I think about the artist I am listening to right now

as she sings All my days I wait for something more

and I think

I do too much of that too, don’t I

and flower face is right, I learned all my sadness from watching TV

but I grew up in front of a laptop screen

so that’s not quite right

and nothing is ever quite right

as I walk outside and past wars of stickers and posters ripped apart and stuck atop each other,

graffiti and illegal weed shops and all of it,

hidden away from my ears plugged by earbuds too loud,

too hipster, with my music player like it’s 2006,

like I was more than a toddler that year,

like I know more than I actually do,

like I’ve experienced more than I actually have

but I still walk every other day

to class

to therapy

with my mask on

with my earbuds in

and I listen to tortured artists sing about horrifying things

and the images in my head go wild with tortured images

because imagination is what we cling to most in our misery

and for me

misery only loves the company of its ideals

I think I get it now

why girls escape into coquettish aesthetics,

all pink bows and frilly dresses,

all evocative of the things I dread so much,

the things I rage against as I call myself a fan of young girls,

and get side eyes and weird glances from everyone I know for it,

as I believe so faithfully

religiously

in the merit of these equally skilled and talentless girls on stages

in front of older men

because to cloak yourself in these aesthetics,

you surrender your misery to a higher power

abuse

possessiveness

control

subjugation

all those lolita images coquettes covet

because they are married to their misery

but I think now as I write

that I could never willingly subjugate myself like that

because I couldn’t rage when I was about to be born

and I can’t rage now because I don’t have it in me

but maybe I do

maybe I have some of that rage in me

as the frustrations boil over in me

as the tears come to my eyes thinking of the girl I was just five years ago

but five years is a lot

and I rage now as I write

the friction coming naturally

as I rage against my own boredom and inaction

I think of those violent images that come to my head outside and walking

with those tortured lyrics running through my ears to my head

and I think now while listening to oomori seiko sing

about the color pink

and rage in a desperate fit of anger and frustration and passion

that despite everything

I still love her art

and maybe that’s callous of me

maybe that’s disgusting of me, actually

given what she has done

but sometimes the art we love is wretched this way

and maybe some day

I will reconcile that

but for now

I write in my word processor

and listen to an album released in 2014,

that I own on cd,

that I have written too much about,

and all those passions come back to me easily,

crashing into me like waves slipping out from a crack in between rocks and stone,

in a dam that’s about to break,

and I don’t know how to end this poem,

I just hear oomori seiko screaming in my ears,

and I wish I was as eloquent as she is in her rage,

even though I shouldn’t wish to be anything like her,

the idea curdling in my stomach,

oomori’s guitar strums too delicate for such a disgusting person,

but her art still means something to me,

and that has to count for something,

just as the idea of tears more than their presence,

has to mean something, anything,

for me to be able to accept the idea

that I don’t cry as much as I want to