When a molecule has too many contradictory forces within it, it will pull itself apart.

And that's who I am, most days, 

I am a myriad of thoughts and emotions and needs and wanting, wanting, wanting

vying for attention in the too-small cavity of my skull,

gathering in the pool of negative thoughts that gathers an inch or so behind my ear,

and barely pausing long enough to spit out a few half-formed scraps of coherent thought

that travel down my spinal column and to my teeth and tongue

and garner me even more weird looks than I already achieve based on the

bits of melodies caught in my throat and resonating outwards

graphite, ink, and probably crayola marker smeared across the various planes of my face

geometric calculations on the edges of my english notebook

rantings about injustice that will never really go away

i am the mad professor

and the rebel with so many causes to count

 

it's like i'm not really devoted to anything

or maybe i'm devoted to too many things because

all of my friends have something to keep them going,

music, art, literature, pot, money, sadness, rage

but i am become so many things

(or nothing at all, that traitorous spot just behind my right ear mutters)

for I am a musician, poet, mathematician, artist, engineer, boy, girl, both?

or maybe I am none of those things, but it doesn't matter because

the ever-growing understanding that this world will make me pick something eventually

crushes the capillaries in the base of my neck

and wears at the thick body of my thigh bones

and grinds this mourner's earthly shell to a fine powder,

suitable for sprinkling on tea, or oil paint smudges,

or salted earth to cry out for that which was never really

lost.

 

I suppose

the most accurate way to describe me would be to say that I care

because that, if anything, is true.

I care about everything, I care about everybody, I care about

every cell in the body of my worst enemy

the caring, this fierce love,

the force of passion is my forwards motion,

like learning to ride a bicycle when you

just

keep

moving

forwards

and the fact that i care so deeply about everything but myself is the major force

that holds me together, and keeps me alive, and compels my cold-numbed fingers 

to create new worlds, new fantasies, new reimaginings,

until the real world can finally

let me in