Blog

Favorite Album(s)

Daily writing prompt
What’s your all-time favorite album?
View all responses

Introducing Joss Stone is one of my favorite albums. I heard of her when I was around seventh or eighth grade and when I first heard her singing I was hooked. She just puts so much soul into her music, and these past few weeks while working on my assignments I kept listening to the songs on this album. One of the songs on the album I really love is “What Were We Thinking.” Another album I really love listening to all the time is Brown Sugar by D’Angelo. It’s an R n B album like Introducing Joss Stone, and I love listening to D’Angelo’s voice. He does a really beautiful rendition of “Cruisin'” by Smokey Robinson, and adds his own unique flavor to it. His voice is just so mature and, I don’t know, sexy. I am going to be honest, I got an eargasm* every time he hit those high notes on the song “Cruisin’.” I couldn’t stop listening to it this week. Another album I recommend is Frank by the late Amy Winehouse. “In My Bed” is one of my favorite songs on the album, and I just love her combination of jazz and soul. I really miss her but she left an incredible legacy of music I can continue to listen to in those moments when I’m just going through a lot and need some good music.

*all credit goes to Blackstreet and Dr. Dre for coining the wonderful word eargasm on their song “No Diggity.”

TV Show Synopsis: Queen Charlotte

I’m currently watching a show called Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. I really wanted to watch it because I saw the trailer for it and was super pumped after seeing seasons 1 and 2 of Bridgerton. It is a really good series so far. It really gives good backstory about the Queen and her marriage to King George. In one of the seasons of Bridgerton, it gives a brief glimpse of Charlotte’s marriage to George but we don’t really see a lot of him after that. Queen Charlotte lets Charlotte tell her story.

The show also grapples with mental illness and how people treated it at the time (spoiler: they didn’t treat it very well.) At first I was confused as to why George couldn’t stay in Buckingham Palace with Charlotte. Was he with another woman? Did he have a health condition that prevented him from staying with her? Was he impotent? I really didn’t know. But as the show progressed, seeing George’s pain and suffering as he dealt with mental illness and the tortuous treatments his doctors gave him at the time, I began to really see George’s humanity and understood much more why he couldn’t be with Charlotte. Because there wasn’t as expansive an understanding of mental illness as there is now. At first I trusted this doctor that the Princess ordered for George, I thought he was a great guy because he used talking to get George to calm down. But then as the episode progressed, it is clear that this doctor was torturing George. He forced George to take ice baths, eat gruel and gave him shocks in an electric chair, and also put leeches on him. The reasoning he gave was that George was living this very pampered life, and it was not good for him, so he needed to have his body subjected to torture and pain because somehow that would cure his “madness.” I think as the series progresses though it is clear that these methods of torture did way more harm than good. In fact, these torture methods didn’t do him any good at all really. I was glad when Charlotte finally fires this doctor after finally seeing what the doctor was putting her husband through.

To be honest, it’s been a while since I studied American history and learned about George’s mental health. The last thing I heard was the movie The Madness of King George, and after seeing this episode I think watching the movie might give me more context about King George’s struggle with his mental health. Queen Charlotte isn’t informed at first about George’s declining mental health but then she later hears noises and then finds him scrawling a lot of drawings and sketches on the walls of the palace, and then when he sees her he doesn’t recognize who she is and runs away from her. He strips naked in the garden and thinks he sees Venus in the sky, but then Charlotte has to put a blanket over him and bring him back home and pretend that she is Venus because that is the only way she can convince him to come home.

There is one particular scene that stuck with me. Queen Charlotte summons Violet Bridgerton to meet with her and Lady Danbury for tea. It’s not just idle chatter, but Queen Charlotte wants to know how she managed to encourage her kids to have children. Charlotte’s children don’t want to settle down even though they are grown adults, and that is stressful for Charlotte because she needs an heir, and the child who was supposed to be the heir died with its mother when she was giving birth. Violet says that it helps if the children are in love with the other person in their relationships, and that is a ridiculous concept to Charlotte because she didn’t marry for love, she married so she could consummate and sire an heir because that was the obligation and expectation put on her as the Queen of England. Lady Danbury also didn’t have a happy loving marriage and hated every minute of having sex with her husband, Lord Danbury, so much so that when he died while they were having sex, she relished it and gleefully told her lady-in-waiting, Coral.

I really love the representation of queer characters, though. Brimsley and Reynolds are the queen and king’s right hand men respectively, and they fall in love with each other. Of course, during the time you couldn’t be an out gay person so they had to keep their relationship hidden, but I just appreciate that they put their story in. They have an interesting relationship because Brimsley wants to know certain details about the King’s life and especially when George is being tortured, Brimsley asks Reynolds about it, but Reynolds cannot share this information with him even when Charlotte demands for Brimsley to find out what is going on. Reynolds hears George’s screams as he is being tortured and tries to save George’s life after he is kicked out of the torture chamber, but he is forced out of the room. Honestly the torture scenes were pretty tough to watch. It showed though how doctors didn’t really have good methods at the time for addressing illnesses and diagnoses.

There is one scene where Violet and Lady Danbury are sitting in the balcony seeing an opera and Violet asks Lady Danbury if Queen Charlotte ever gets lonely. Even though her husband George is alive, Charlotte doesn’t get to spend much time with him and spends a lot of her time alone. This is how it was from the beginning of their marriage; Charlotte could not spend time with her husband because he was ashamed of his struggles with mental illness and thought that showing his true self to her would hurt her. However, there is a scene when she finally barges into his astrology lab and demands that he let her know if he loves her or not. It is a very moving scene because it shows how Charlotte loves George for who he is and is willing to maintain their marriage even though George thinks that having this illness makes him unlovable in the eyes of Charlotte. George carries a lot of pressure to maintain his title as king and his battles with epilepsy and mental health make it hard for him to project this perfect image in society. It kind of reminded me of The Crown because Prince Charles struggled with his self-worth because he always carried this pressure to be perfect since so much of his self-worth depended on his social standing and his title. So he couldn’t just say what he wanted or do what he wanted because he was representing all of England. So when he supports Wales’ self-determination, his mother, Queen Elizabeth, is furious because she thinks he went against what he was supposed to do. After taking classes in Welsh with the teacher, though, and learning more about the history of Wales, he understands that the Welsh people are still oppressed under the rule of England and that it isn’t right and so he wants to speak up. I think especially after he is pulled out of acting school at Cambridge he wants to do something that will give him purpose because acting gave him a purpose in life and also a voice, so making this speech advocating for the people of Wales was that one thing where he felt he had a voice and a purpose. But his mother tells him that no one cares what he thinks, and I think this really crushes his self-esteem. But in Queen Charlotte, later in the series, George’s mother reveals her own scars and trauma to Lady Danbury after Lady Danbury breaks down and cries. She reveals that George’s father abused her and George, but she was forced to take it and not cry because she had this expectation and standard to uphold to not show vulnerability or appear weak. I’m thankful nowadays that we can show up as our authentic selves and have these conversations about vulnerability and healing because I’m sure that back then, there wasn’t the vocabulary or resources to talk about this painful stuff in our lives.

Overcoming Loneliness

I read this article in a publication I read called Living Buddhism and it talks about using Buddhist practice to overcome loneliness. I really like the article because it reminds me that I’m not alone in my feelings of loneliness and that finding meaningful social interactions is important for my health. I remember reading a book by Vivek Murthy called Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, and I honestly didn’t know I would need to read this book until I started grappling with my own loneliness these past few years. Even before many of us went into quarantine in 2020, I was battling many bouts of loneliness. Most of my life I have been pretty proud of my introverted nature. As a kid I loved sitting alone, and time out time was great for me because I loved reading my books in time out, so it rarely if ever felt like punishment. But I think along the way, I received these social cues from my peers and teachers that sent the message that somehow being alone wasn’t a good thing, and so I started to think that being an introvert was a character flaw rather than just something that was part of my personality. Thankfully I had the support of my Buddhist community and my family to remind me to be true to myself, and that I could still grow and flourish in life even as an introvert. In college I struggled a lot with loneliness, even when I was active in extracurriculars and was taking all these classes. When I first got to college I was so excited to meet lots of people, but I think I burned out after a while and after a while my friends would send me invitations to go out and I would ignore their text messages and eat by myself. At first I was fine eating by myself, but by junior year I had developed some pretty serious symptoms of depression, and I ended up withdrawing into my shell. I had moved into a new dormitory that year and was excited to get my own dorm room, but I ended up going through this daily cycle where I would go to class, go to my music practice, then I would go into my dorm room and not come out. It got to the point where I wasn’t even really comfortable going into crowded dining halls because I just got so anxious, and I would often isolate myself instead of talking to my housemates. There were a few people in the dorm I interacted with that were pretty welcoming, but other than that I just felt this intense sense of isolation. Even though there were plenty of people to talk to, I just felt disconnected from everyone. This led to me struggling with some pretty serious mental health issues to the point where I could no longer just keep all my pain and suffering in, and so I finally had to see someone. But once again, I felt like this was something I needed to deal with on my own so I stopped actively seeking professional help. Not the smartest decision, let me tell you. It was rough. I honestly think practicing Buddhism saved my life at that time because I was just barely making it. There were many days I would sit in class and think, Shit, everyone hates me. Even when I couldn’t read minds, it still felt like everyone hated me even though they probably weren’t thinking about me much at all. I had feelings of worthlessness so deep that when it came time for group discussions, I honestly felt, No one gives a shit if I’m in the room. Who would want to pair up with someone like me? And so I would leave the classroom and go outside for a while and not come back in until the breakout discussion time was over. I remember one of my friends in the Buddhist community encouraged me to share about my Buddhist practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo with other people. At first I was reluctant because I had to discontinue the Buddhist club I was running on campus since I couldn’t find anyone to be treasurer or president or fill the other positions, so I just shut down and got really hard on myself because I tend to be like that a lot. But I decided to chant about it, and so I ended up doing a final project presentation with another philosophy major (she and I were the only two philosophy majors in the class. It was a class on philosophy and psychology) about the effects of meditation on the brain. Naturally I wanted to share about the Buddhism I practice, so I ended up handing out these golden cards with Nam-myoho-renge-kyo printed on them to each of my classmates, and I shared on the PowerPoint a photo of the actor Orlando Bloom chanting and some information about the Buddhism I grew up practicing. Afterwards my teacher asked for information about Buddhism and so I was able to share a card with her too. Honestly, after I shared Buddhism with my classmates, it totally changed the way I felt about myself and my time in the class. I felt that time that I did have a voice and that I did have something to contribute to the class. This was a huge transformation for me because before that I felt like the most worthless person in the class and was very reluctant to open up to my classmates, but sharing Buddhism helped me feel more comfortable opening up to them and I was able to connect with them in my own unique small way.

Alright, gonna head to bed. Thank you for reading, and wishing everyone observing the Jewish New Year a safe and peaceful holiday.

Screenplay: The Tour (part 1)

Setting: September 2019, Sunny Lane Coffee Shop, Los Angeles, California

A young Black girl named Natalie Hermann is working behind the counter at Sunny Lane Coffee Shop. She peers out the window as a celebrity walks past the shop, daydreaming about making it in her own music career (I’m getting La La Land vibes here).

Supervisor: Nat.

Natalie continues to look out the window. The voice calling her name is muffled.

Supervisor: Nat!

Natalie turns around and sees her supervisor, Megan, looking at her with an angry expression and tapping her foot.

Megan: Your shift ends in an hour. Get back to work.

Natalie sighs and gets back to the counter.

A snooty lady walks up to her and throws her $5 bill on the counter. The lady is wearing a fur coat and smells strongly of Chanel No. 5

Lady: Grande Mocha Latte, sugar free, no foam, extra shot of espresso.

Natalie takes the five dollar bill and quietly rings up the woman’s order.

The lady’s smartphone rings, and she picks it up.

Lady: Yes? Oswald, I am coming right-fucking-now! Just let me get my damned drink!

She snaps her fingers at Natalie.

Natalie sucks in her breath real hard and is trying her hardest not to snap at the woman. She steams the milk and cuts off the steamer before it can foam up the milk. She swirls the sugar free mocha sauce into the cup and then gently pours he milk into the cup. When she is finished, she hands the drink to the lady, who takes it without a word of acknowledgment and trounces off in her furs. Natalie wonders how sweaty the woman is under all that fur.

The scene cuts to a busy law office, where a woman named Desiree Schwartzman is typing at a desk. She is an attractive 26-year old white woman with curly brown hair and is wearing black Louboutin heels, a black A-line skirt, and a white collared top. She has her brown hair pulled back in a messy bun.

A 5 ft 6 in 60-year-old Black gentleman with thinning grey curly hair knocks on her desk. She looks up. It is her boss, James Watson, who runs The Watson Law Firm, a firm specializing in personal injury cases.

Watson: I need those cases entered by tomorrow. Why are you so far behind?

Desiree can’t think of anything to say. She stayed up late—much to the annoyance of her sister, Emily– practicing her viola for her audition. She lives at home with her and while Emily loves her music, Desiree’s obsession with the audition has caused tensions between her and her family.

Scene flashes back to last night at 1 AM, when Desiree is practicing her instrument furiously. She saws away at the Strauss excerpt and hears a loud banging on the door. She opens it and her 17 year old sister, Emily, is beet red and her eyes are bloodshot.

Emily: I have a fucking chemistry exam tomorrow. Go to sleep.

Without a word, she slams the door. Desiree fumes silently and then puts her viola in her case. She crawls into bed, and her eyes remain open for the rest of the night because she cannot sleep. She is too nervous about the audition to fall asleep.

Desiree fumbles for words, but Watson cuts her off.

Watson: I have a meeting, but get them in by the end of the day.

Desiree: Yes, sir.

Watson walks away.

Desiree puts her hand in her head, closes her eyes, and then sucks in a huge breath and looks at the mounting pile of cases on her desk. She glances at the clock on the wall to her right. It is 1 pm and she hasn’t taken a lunch break.

(To be continued.)

Childbirth

Written on January 30, 2021

I.
She walks out on the stage
Cello in hand
Her enormous belly a gargantuan protruding mass
Lying under the comfort of her purple satin 
dress
Folds upon folds of fabric 
Shield the soon to be born human
From the cold of the concert hall
She feels the fetus dance around
Anxious for what is to come
It performs its final flops in her belly
Its grand finale
Communicating with her
One last time
Before emerging into the world
A latent soul of flesh and blood
Lying dormant in the amniotic fluid
That nourishes it
As she walks across the stage
She remembers nine months of gestation
Of procrastination
Of the prestidigitation that the unborn baby
Performed for her within the confines of her dark dank womb
She remembers months of morning sickness
Of dialogues with her unborn progeny
The passing weeks
The growth of her abdomen
The little unexpected pops she felt
Every time the little one's fist or foot made contact
Sweet loving contact
With the walls of her belly
The quest it went on 
To nourish its brain, heart and body
Each time Mother dined on the flesh of a freshly slaughtered chicken
Or a piping hot slice of gooey apple pie
The flavors of the chicken
Salty roasted hot
Balanced out with the decadent sweetness of the pie
Makes for a delicious nighttime meal
The baby tastes these flavors
As the placenta nourishes it
It fondles her umbilical cord
Tinkering the tips of its fingers
Upon the long rope that connects mother and child

II.

She eases herself upon the chair
The weight of the child upon her legs
She starts off with a slow bowing of the cello
Breathes as much air as she can into her lungs 
And then begins a lively presto of a piece
Dancing along with the cello
The baby hears all of this, hears mom
playing an incredible concert
Its last concert to be heard within the womb
It wriggles its toes
It rocks back and forth
And as soon as the audience breaks out into applause
The chrysalis of amniotic fluid that kept it
sealed within the mother
Breaks onto the wooden floor of the stage

III.

She races into a wheelchair through the emergency room
Passing rows upon rows of hospital beds
Filled with individuals
Human souls
Hooked up to ventilators
As their family members hold their hands one 
last time
Nurses, doctors racing with masks on
In a frenzied nightmare
To save humanity against a deadly virus
That has killed over 400,000 people in this 
country and millions around the world.
Her dress now a damp mass dripping sweat 
and amniotic fluid from her body
She breathes quickly through the N95 mask
that covers her mouth
She can still feel him perform some last
minute movements
Begging her to let him stay
Begging her to let him continue to savor the
beauty of the womb
For all eternity
Until she is a dying decomposed corpse
No
I cannot let you stay
You stayed nine months
You have overstayed your welcome
Sorry 
You must come out in a dark and scary world
But I will hold your hand for you for all
eternity
Even when you grow older
The umbilical cord lies in the depths of your 
heart
We had fun together
Now I need you to come out

IV.

She pushes 
No epidural in all the heavens
Can force the child to emerge
He wants to stay nestled in the comfort of the womb
Even though he must detach from the
placenta
He screams his goodbyes
In tears
Upon
Tears
He begs for mercy 
Each time she forces him out
Of that painfully small hole
He knows no claustrophobia
Only a fear of what is to come
Living in a world of uncertainty.
When she pushes
Only her shit emerges
She is in too much pain to be embarrassed
by the smell
As the fresh pile of watery feces collects on
the delivery tab
A guttural yell rips from the depths of her
throat
AS the head emerges ever so slightly
As dilated as her cervix is
It still hurts like a motherfucker
She cries
And cries
And finally hears another cry
From across her
Her child
Born of flesh and blood
A mangled mass of crimson flesh and matted
hair
Belts out a song of new life, of new
possibilities
Of new hope and dreams
She joins in the chorus of call and response
And swaddles the mass of T-cells, flesh and
blood
The doctor cuts the umbilical cords
And hands the baby to the mother
She welcomes her baby as a brand new
member
Into the orchestra of life
To play a symphony with her
Encompassing all of the months they shared
together
And more memories they will share together
As mother and child

Cello

Written on: January 26, 2021

I have a wooden muse
She produces wonderful sounds
She is my cello
Each time she straddles her sexy self between my legs
She performs a seductive dance for me
Winding her perfect hourglass figure 
Grinding against my groin
She has more meat than a tenderloin
Steak, done medium-rare
She has a fierce personality 
So fierce that Sasha got her to sing on stage with her
Backstage pass for free.
When my cello performs her traditional daily lap dance
For the evening
She also seduces me with her soulful voice
Her voice is a sticky honeypot
That makes my mouth water and my eyes water
As I take in the frequencies, the power, the soul
Of her sensual serenade
My ears waltz to the tunes of her melodies and harmonies
They slow dance to the largo of the bow
They rock out like they're in a mosh pit to the aggressive fortissimos
That she growls in a show of ferocity and passion
My ears fall into a trance
When they see her dance
And whisper "pianissimo" 
By the time the lap dance is over
I am exhilarated
Mindblown
Flabbergasted
What did I just witness?
Each time she dances for me
I pay her in empty compliments and cheap thrills
But she is the real deal
And I owe her more than just a good time.

Somerville, Massachusetts, July 8, 2012

Written on January 8, 2021

Summer day in Somerville
Eating fresh pumpkin butter
On When Pigs Fly bread
The dough melds with that
Cinnamon fall sweet pumpkin puree
I look out my apartment window
At the cars below me making their way through the city
Nina Simone
Ms. Nina
Ms. Goddess of Soul and Jazz
Croons on the radio
Perched on the window sill
Her voice drapes around me like a warm velvet curtain
Enrapturing me
Raw and viscous like organic Manuka honey
Fresh from the comb
Stirred in a pot with sugar
To make a caramel syrup
My potted plant, Nefertiti
Sits on the windowsill
She and the radio, Rachel, are best friends
Ms. Nina cradles me in the velvet drapery
Caressing my face with those ivory and ebony piano keys
The sweet feeling of sweet music
Ms. Nina reminds me I am never alone
The sweetness in my mouth
From the pumpkin butter on sourdough toast
And the lullaby of resistance
And the Black female experience
In all its pain, power, pleasure
The Black womanhood
Which Ms. Nina lives and narrates
Makes me feel like I'm in the life state
Of heavenly bliss
Ms. Nina is my crib, my hammock,
She rocks me to sleep
The soft chatter of the drums
And the sensuous vocals from the saxophone
Dances across my eyelids
My cinnamon sugar eyelids
Closed for maintenance
Soaking in the sounds
The sycamore leaves as they dance
Alongside me in the arms of their branches
These voices
Slow waltz
Glide
On the linoleum floor of my eyelids
The song ends
My muscles limp as spaghetti
Milky orange drool dripping from the crevice of my chapped bruised lips
Caked with blood from biting them just a little too hard while asleep
Legs a puddle of chocolate
Melted in the 100 degree drought
I am asleep.

I Exist

Written on 6/11/19

I exist and there is really nothing to it
I exist and that's a fact
I know I take up space 
With my curvy Black body
My kinky hair, my smushed up nose
And I know you turn and look around 
At the new girl taking up space
And you know what
I am fine with that
Taking up space is fine
I belong here on this planet Earth
Thanks very much.
It's not elementary school, my dear Watson
I can sit wherever I damn well please.
I can sit with the cool kids regardless 
Of whether you think I'm cool or not
So with that, Tommy, can I have your 
applesauce?
Our society has grown to be more accepting
And yet everyone has their demons they fight
School bullies fight them every day
And every day they keep losing out to the inner demons
Who are the real bullies
Psychology can mess us up.
So I'm going to stop watching the news
And embrace my Black womanhood.
While aware that plenty of women like me
Feel this way.
Feel that they take up space.
When I dance around the room
That simple chic studio
When I sashay in my worn pink flats
When I curve my body to the sweeping sounds
Of Tchaikovsky's Sugar Plum Fairy
I don't see many ballerinas who look like me

But I am fine with that
Because what matters is that I show up for 
the work
I take up space
So get used to it.

Success

Written on June 11, 2019

Success is fleeting
It is but a dream
A mystery shrouded in gossamer
One minute you're bussing tables
Laden with dirty dishes and pathetic pennies for tips
The next thing you're kicking back
In your multicolored sneakers
And dapper woolen suit
On a silver platinum leather sofa
Talking with a toothy grinned talk show host about those early server days
Laughing away like you'd never laugh again. 

Success is a temporary solution
To the pain and suffering we go through
Day in and day out
We convince ourselves that everything is bigger and brighter
Cooler and shinier
Healthier and prettier
When we have a mansion, a 2,000 square foot jacuzzi, three kids
All attending private schools in the Berkshires
And a six-figure salary, complete with a kiss-my-ass CEO title to match

While we revel in our success
The planet burns slower and slower
The ozone hole getting wider and wider
Darker and scarier by the minuto
Earthquakes in Ohio shaking people's houses
Tornadoes uprooting millions of tall trees in Dallas
Wildfires ravaging Los Angeles

Meanwhile kids are dying of suicide bombings
Crying tears of anguish
As the government refuses to put down its weapons of 
Mass destruction and send those same kids to school
Depriving them of a life of their own.

I don't know what my own take on success is
And I don't really want to follow society's definitions of success
I don't know if I want to be a celebrity
With paparazzi throwing themselves at me like dogs
I don't know if my core is strong enough
To take the trolls, the critics and the self-doubt
My heart aches when I think about the polar bears
Trying to survive on less than a millimeter of ice
While I travel the globe in my private 747, sipping a glass of pinot grigio
Feeling guilt but not doing anything constructive to process that guilt

When I make it to Carnegie
Will I still tense up with fear?
When I get on that gilded stage with my cello
Will I taste bile coming up from
The Charybdis of my throat? 
At that moment, will I surrender my ego
To the sweet sounds of Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B minor
Or get so bogged down by the inner critic
That shouts at me to stop playing and just give up already?

Life is a learning process
Not everyone finds their passion when they're 3
Success is not a straight line
But a complicated labyrinth, a Rubik's cube that is hard to solve
A stray cow-lick that is hard to pin down no matter
How much gel or hairspray or cement you put on it.
Success has its ups and downs
It is a heart monitor, zig-zagging day after day
Minute after minute
Hour after hour

Success is what you make of it
It is like a technicolor dreamcoat
Not a black and white cookie
Success has its ups and downs
But in the end, it means not giving up
It means showing up whether you feel like it or not.
The words on this page are utter crap.
Yet I have shit to say and I'mma damn well say it.

It means, this definition of success, 
Celebrating each victory, no matter how small
Going to bed feeling grateful
Even just having lived another day
Feeling appreciation for life itself
Success is what you make of it. 
It's a technicolor dreamcoat, not a black and white cookie
When you make that big break, it's okay
To shed tears of joy, jump around the room in squeals
Run over the allotted speech time until the pit orchestra cuts you off
(Next award announcer please.)

And when you fall hard
Cry it out
Just get back up and go at it again
Even if you're crawling like an earthworm
Who has baked in the 100 degree heat and 
Fried like a Sunny-side-up egg
Tries to make the most of even
The smallest ounce left of its life
Even if your body is trying to brandish its sword
Against the dark demons in the depths of your mind
Even if your body spears them
Even when that bitter wormwood voice shouts at you
To throw in the towel and quit on life
Keep going
Keep crawling until you get to the door
Keep crawling until you open the door just a crack
To bring in the sunlight
And ward away the black

Even when you are screaming a blood curdling cry
At your body
Crawling, screaming, pleading at your limp noodle body
To go just one more day without taking those pills
Without putting that blade to those wrists
Without knotting that rope
To fight the demons that feast upon your limp noodle body
Day after day
Night after night
Hour after hour
Year after year
Minute after minute
Second after second
If you crawled even just an inch
Congrats you have made it
But there's no endpoint
Keep crawling
And trust me, success will feel like dining at a five-star restaurant
Success means continuing to drive
Even when your engine keeps sputtering and retching empty fumes
Success means different things for different people

Success is success
And it's what you make of it.