Poems for the End of the World

by Katie Wismer

they tell you to love yourself before you let anyone else so now here I stand on this mountain of confidence and achievements I’ve spent my whole life building and I look around wondering if anyone will even know how to find me all the way up here

I am a therapist a friend a confidant a knife to split open your veins until the truth runs down your fingertips and collects into some semblance of understanding I am your thoughts a catalyst a roadmap a mode of transportation to make the intangible so very, very real I am your greatest ally at least until I run out of ink

I’ve lived inside of my head for so long sometimes I forget there’s an entire world outside of it

and I wonder if I will ever be able to unlearn all of the hateful things society has taught me to think about myself

my ability to experience the world more intensely is not a weakness

how much longer must we endure a culture that shames emotions

a slow stretch first thing in the morning a shared laugh finding common ground with a stranger catching the sunset on my drive home from work the eager greetings of my dogs as I return discovering a poem when I’m not looking for one - moments where I find peace

I am not a windup toy or an application for an award I am not tireless or only worthy when I am succeeding - things to remember

some days I feel like a struggling metaphor a lone descriptor without its pair a moth searching for the moon certain I’ve found the right direction but I just keep hitting glass a paper full of scratched out ideas the perfect word just out of reach a girl in a woman’s body just trying to remember how to breathe

my soul burns with the forever unresolved need for everyone to like me even if I don’t like them

we carefully winged our eyeliner and picked out our favorite jeans just to down a bottle of wine each and drown ourselves in a sea of people who had done the same and at the end of the night after some of us had scattered to fall into the arms of boys whose faces we never saw I’ll never forget the look in her eyes because she hadn’t found what she was hunting for I wonder if she noticed that all of ours looked the same

the jeans I wore in high school don’t fit me anymore and neither do some of my dreams - it’s okay to let those go too

this home of flesh and blood is trying its best to keep me afloat working overtime to keep up with the demands of a healthy society and I refuse to resent or criticize it the way everyone else does when it’s doing the best it fucking can

as my excuses aged they became weathered and dull so I buried them in the ground weeping at their passing at the sudden absence of floodgates to my guilt and regrets I revisit them from time to time but I go empty handed because now it is clear to me that growing bored of them has been my greatest achievement

but above all I hope they’ll think of me and see the parts they liked and be inspired to be a little kinder a little more patient a little more open-minded than they were yesterday

and you laugh and shake your head when I say I don’t want kids but the impossibility of it— there is no version of motherhood for me that would bring anything but dissatisfaction and resentment one way or another

the world’s greatest lie is that we should strive to be happy all the time a full range of human emotions at our disposal and we want to limit ourselves to a single one

how long do we have before my mother is too lost to be scared anymore

how long do I have until the pieces start to go missing for me too

I’m always waiting for a text back a paycheck a day off some good news better weather a new idea and as soon as it comes the clock resets and I start waiting for something else - how much time have I wasted this way?

and I realized there is nothing wrong with wanting to see your efforts returned

I wanted to ask him to try harder because I wanted to love him but more than anything I didn’t want to have to ask

I crave a love that is simple with a man who does not mind that I am not

a fresh start sounds so permanent a singular pivot point bridging one half of your life to the next but one of the most beautiful discoveries I’ve made in my life is I can have as many as I want