you will make questions

you wonder about silly things. you daydream doing dishes. hands wrinkling under sulfates, you think... is this what being a person is? is this why we evolved? where are your berries in the sunlight? where are your wildflowers dripping morning dew? this isn't the condition you were promised, you think, but then the only promises made to you were made mirror to flesh. 

you try to answer questions, questions that you ask yourself. you try to make a soul out of nothing. what are you but a rambling noisemaker, caustic thoughts and the responses meant to balm? you cause the problems so that you can fix them. you build a tower, you cave it in, and you build it back again. there is a cadence amid chaos. 

all your life, you create. when you are small, you bounce between worlds. as you grow, you find something along the way. it feels familiar the very first time you step inside. it is another place, and it demands something of you. it is higher than you, and it calls. do you answer? 

you pick up bad habits like litter along the highway. you save your nastiest words for yourself or, at the very least, you try to convince yourself that's true. you become ugly and cruel along the way. is this what being a person is? now you choose to be nice because being mean scares you. stoppered and wax-sealed, you sit in the basement, all the sadness within you fermenting. you can get drunk on this feeling, hating yourself.   
 
you will make things you think are mediocre. other people will love them. maybe they will love them because of the mediocrity. maybe they will love them in spite of it. it won’t make a difference either way. it will still do its frivolous job. it will still boost your ego. they like me when i’m not performing as intended, you’ll think, but just wait until i’m at my best.

your best will come and eventually, it will go. you will feel it so deeply that it becomes part of your eigengrau. mixed in with greens and greys, you see... your best. some days it will be far away. some days, it is so close. you’ll see it when you sleep. you'll hear it when you eat. you will burn with red hot pride every time you think about it. ask about what i’m doing, you’ll hope, clinging to the tablecloth. you will chomp at the bit as they talk of other things, no less important, but not you. you’ll wait your turn as you keep your elbows off the table, and when it finally comes time for them to look, you’ll wait, your apprehension and excitement mixing the way it used to on birthday eve, on christmas morning. 

they won’t love it the way you love it. how could they? it is you, and no one will ever love you the way you love yourself because that is complicated and terrible. people have told you that it is not love versus hate, but caring versus indifference. you care about yourself so fucking much that it spills out in every passionate color. the pride is there to protect you. pride covers the back of your neck. ego makes sure you kick against the current. the moment goes with nothing but buttercream behind it. the check clears, and you walk back to your door asking yourself why no one loves the things you love, the parts of you that you cherish most. 

who am i doing this for? myself, the person i am torn between loving and hating? where does this drive come from? from synapses? from a blind god? is it me? why do i make these things? why do i make these questions? 

eventually, you realize something that is hard to know. still, you hold it inside your heart: answers rarely exist, but the questions will always matter.