I am sitting here in the library on a perfect little metal chair that is freezing my behind, while the air conditioning above is sweltering and sucking the air out of my chest. Listening to Coldplay with a chem book in my hand, I am trying to compose a poem or write something meaningful about life, and experiences and love and joy and little butterflies and rainbows and unicorns and magic. I am writing a song for you right now, only it isn’t a song, rather a jumble of words that make no sense, everything pouring straight out of my head as I type it with no filter.
But I am singing.

It is a sad song. A song you sing when you are sad and are sitting on the bathtub with the shower running over your head, half empty beer cans rolling around near the trashcan, the yellow light in the ceiling reflecting in the bathroom mirror, bouncing off the smooth cans into your eyes and all you can see and think about is how drunk you want to get, not because you enjoy drinking but because you do not enjoy being sober and feeling all the feelings and all these raging emotions inside your head.

Your heart bleeds and you laugh a little because the hammer you used to shatter it into pieces is in somebody else’s hands now. You handed the hammer to that person because self blame hurts, self guilt hurts, it is easier to tell the world that it was that one person who broke you, rather than shouldering the responsibility for your own mistakes.

You cleanse yourself in the water, sit there under the shower, teeth chattering because you’ve been sitting too long and the water’s getting cold because your skin has gone numb to the warmth. You get up, gather yourself, wear fresh track pants and jog outside to meet your friends in the park. They ask you why your hair is dripping at 12 in the midnight and you tell them you just swam a mile in the Pacific ocean just to meet them and they all laugh at your dedication and pass you the blunt, every single one of them with wet hair and loose grins and bandaged wrists, and tattooed scars. You light up the joint, smoking in the warmth, your insides feel light and gooey and you sit there watching the fumes that you breathe out dance with five other dancing fumes, taking the pain away for one another day.

And smiling, you sing the song I am writing for you.