Crisis

You tell yourself, "You don't understand," and then laugh because how's that possible? You're talking to yourself. How can you not understand?

But it's there, isn't it? The thought? The feeling? You like too easily, you care too much, feel too deeply, and YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND.

Then you draw it on your hand, on the back of your palm, you engrave it into your heart and carve it on your mind: I DON'T UNDERSTAND, I DON'T UNDERSTAND, over and over and over again until it consumes you; until it becomes you, until it IS you.

Engrave it so deep until it digs into every inch of your bones, on your tendons, your muscles, your arteries. Let it become your blood and let it run through you like acid until it melts away everything you once thought you knew about yourself; and all these unfamiliar songs that make you want to scrape your skin off with your own fingernails play on repeat in your mind and YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, YOU DON'T.

With every single drum beat, with every unknown baseline, you feel yourself peel away bit by bit, piece by piece, until all you can do is scrape yourself off the floor and drip yourself into a mask and perfectly pressed clothes. You brave the world because they won't understand, they won't, you don't.

You carry on day after day, year after year, and eons pass and still: you don't understand, you don't understand, over and over again.

You stop, try to rebuild, rename, recreate the shadow of yourself before you stopped comprehending your existence, but there's nothing left. It's just goop and bones tattooed with your mantra, and unfamiliar music blaring on broken speakers.

You turn to smoke, to burning liquids, to broken bottles and sharpened blades, empty vessels who offer hollowed out love. You build yourself up again and again, and... No, you don't understand.

My darling, they say, the answer is not in the powder you sniff into your system, it is not in the clear flames you pour down your throat, it is not in the nicotine you immerse yourself in, it's not in the blood you spill on your bathroom floor, it's not in that long-haired boy with the bright eyes and the promises that will shatter like thin ice. It's in you, under the acid and beyond the horrible music.

But... YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, you don't understand, you... you don't...

I don't understand.