by Louis Meagher-Diello

Each day a blur,
My memories and tasks a blend of noise
A feeling of being stuck like none I know,
As I watch the world burn around me.

All the time in the world to regret the past years,
My memories biting at my conscious
Am I really so foolish?
Could I really have wasted three years on an impossible hope?

The dreams I had for the year to come disappearing before my eyes,
The dreams I had for my life quickly outran me.
I lied to myself until I believed them,
I’d do anything and be anything to see it true.

Have I forgotten myself?
I lay there wondering,
who it was that I saw from the eyes of?
Where were these ideas coming from?
What had I become?

I no longer have the sweet innocence I was loved for.
I have become a mirage of my dreams
And each of those dreams a husk.
A patchwork of foolish ambitions and dreams.

I feel foolish for my self-obsession.
So many others are faced with much worse than I,
Yet I feel so desperate and abandoned.
A new want in me has risen.

A wish to leave it all behind,
To forget everything I know now.
To be graced with a second start
To not make the same mistakes
To leave our cracked and broken world.

We watch from our rooms as what we stand for disappears
Our voices screaming out against it
Yet so many of us silent
All we can do is watch and hope.

We stand in the view as our own planet tears us apart,
In our selfish greed, we took too much
And in return, the Earth has taken back
And yet we can do nothing about it alone like this.

We weep as our love is trampled like dirt,
Many tell us our love is wrong and unnatural.
But what is unnatural about love?
And we are powerless against the ones that end pure love.

We mourn for our loved ones and friends,
As we are ravaged by sickness,
And voids appear in our lives
Many stand to end it,
But what is science is made politics
We watch as plague reaps our lives.

So this is the way we are
Stuck and set in place
Forced to watch as our society is unhinged.
Wondering if our home is truly as great as we were made to think.
Wondering if our lives are as serene as they ought to be.