I had used to fear that no one would like me
because I believed no one could understand me.
As but one among billions of the same speciel copy,
somehow inside me I was an outlier.
This childish fear manifested in an adult body.
Where it came from or how it started, I know too well.

Brush your teeth, speak nicely, mission accomplished.
Not too complicated. The adult world is fairly easy.
Far Cry from the intricacies of right and wrong
that a playground must bestow on budding personalities.
Yet, brashly I, in my mid twenties,
masked my newfound fear with a middle finger.
I waived it with such panache I fooled so many.
It was those I did not fool that still ghost with me.
To be exposed in the eyes of even one stung immensely.

Individuality is the crapshoot of a dream machine.
There’s a grain to fight because we comprise it.
Though put up a fight for only that may change it.
The inertia of flowing humanity is the challenge;
An endurance game for the soul hungers for connection
and does not stave health as a continual bumper.
Rasp over paper.

To give a fuck, or to not, that is the question.
But betwixt in contradiction.
On one side is the need to connect,
on the other is a desire to stand out.

From the start and in the end we are all the same —
We don’t know what to do with ourselves.