April 2: Stars on fire

Do we believe the stars are on fire
and the vein on your forehead might pop,
do we believe that it's not all okay, that the insides
of your mind are a hell right now, that your hands shake
even when you laugh and even when your gaze is so
steady; how do we believe it

if the streetlights still look like fireworks to you,
if the horizon lit by sun means the universe to your
petty gaze, if you can possess beauty with a click and
if all you really need is the warm touch of comfort,
a body against yours and a blanket for warm nights -

I'm afraid I'm afraid I'm afraid

because my fears are multifaceted and so complex,
my anger at the world is a hundred different hues of
gender colonialism social construction and
I talk to Camus in my sleep and my boulder
gets too heavy some days, the existential ache of
trivial conversations hangs in my mouth like a lie,
and my problems are pathetic, intellectual emotional bullshit,
if it's pseudo I'm sorry but it really does hurt, in a hundred
different ways on a hundred different days, and I'm afraid
of not making a difference I'm afraid of ambition I'm afraid

most of all, I'm afraid that talking doesn't help anymore,
I'm afraid that the answers aren't where I thought they would be.
I'm reading all the books and underlining big words, I promise,
but the questions keep getting bigger and I try to remember Rilke
telling me to love them, the questions themselves, as if they were
locked rooms or books written in a foreign tongue, and it helps:

but only because of the particular feel in my chest when the words
come together, the memory of joy in a classroom, of discovering
beauty for myself that I could keep. The answers the answers the answers
are taking too long, are taking too much out of fragile me, the answers
might never come and the questions keep piling and comfort doesn't always
arrive;

but when it does it's never in the form of an argument, logically arranged
or typed out double spaced font size 12 Times New Roman no
the comfort comes in the form of

golden sun streaming through windows at 5pm, lighting up corners
of my room and my heart, it comes in the form of a doodle in my notes,
rotring pen lines as thin as an eyelash, or watching the birds fly in a flurry
away from approaching footsteps, comfort comes in the form of memory,
in the form of desire, raw and earthy. Comfort comes in the shade of home,
in the scent of rain, in the sound of conversations dipping and rising from
the ashes of ideals I fashioned and polished once, then shattered and
burnt

still shining like stars on fire but I'm afraid
I'll forget someday to look down for comfort, to
recognize simplicity, to lie down in grass and breathe
to myself. And if I forget, I swear, the insides of my mind
will be a hell, my hands will shake
and I will forget to laugh.