Dispatches from an Anxiety Heiress
1
While I was kept in water,
my best friends became best friends
and then they became famous.
Being a good daughter,
I kept tabs on the proximity of the end
and now it’s too late to be shameless.
While I was fertilized in shit,
everyone went to school
and then became teachers.
Being an idiot, I mined history for everything cool.
Now I can’t recognize my features.
2
I remember everyone's birthday.
I just can't wish them a happy one.
I have an eye for all the best things
but I guess I just don't understand fun.
Have you ever sat and calculated
all the work there is to life?
I'm so fucking tight inside.
I'm going to shake, bend, snap, and turn white.
Do you know what year this came out
or how many this has happened to?
Do you know how many hours I wasted
thinking I was through?
64,282.
3
All I had to do was call
but I swear the number was fake.
You've gotta count all your problems
just to see how much you can take.
I put them all in order,
catalogued by age and duration,
and maybe notebooks full of illness
are the next big teen sensation.
4
Girl next dumpster,
daydream nonbeliever,
and a homestaying queen.
I can show up and breathe your air
but I can’t
and I won't
stay clean.
Give 'em hell, your slice of the truth,
and one day it won't hurt
when your problems with other people
are not printed on a shirt.
5
Life is pretend, talking is work.
Perform for survival and feel like a jerk.
I know there's lots of people like me
isolated throughout the Earth
but what if we all got together
and I was still the worst?
Kari Rogers is a Los Angeles-based writer and undergraduate student at Pasadena City College.