Miriya Huie, poetry, 2023
I love her.
It’s exhausting to be told that
I don’t love her.
I shouldn’t love her.
It’s normal to hate yourself.
It’s normal to hate your family.
It’s normal to hate your life.
Can’t it be normal to love, too?
I think she’s beautiful.
She always has a smile on her face
Because she always has something to smile about.
Everything is going right.
The past is something people overcome,
And yet, there wasn’t much to challenge her.
She feels others’ pain, but her only pain
Is watching those around her crumble
Into the sand of a desert expanse.
Is no one else happy?
Can no one else love their life?
The desert sun is exhausting.
There’s only sand as far as she can see.
She’s naive.
She plays in the sand, building a castle,
Playing out her fantasies within walls of make-believe.
I love it here. I love my life.
The sun beats down against her until it burns.
I want to live in this fantasy world, just a little longer.
Doesn’t a fantasy have to end?
What will happen when she wakes up?
Do I have to wake up?
Is it inevitable?
The sand around her dissolves beneath her feet,
Her castle turned to ruins.
She searches desperately for the edge of the desert.
Will the overwhelming anxiety and depression and hatred for the self,
for the world, finally show up and infect me like it does everyone else?
Is it an inevitable outcome that I’m putting off, that I’ll become unhappy with my life, just like everyone else always has, and the happiness I have will be taken away from me?
Is the reason I fear for the future because I’m constantly told, in
casual conversation, in social media posts, in the title of an assignment,
that it is assumed that I cannot, will not always, will never, truly love
myself?
Why does the world have to be this way? Why are the only self love declarations so processed through layers of marketability and sanitization that they only enforce the worthlessness everyone feels?
What can I do to stop it? If it’s truly an inevitability, there is nothing I
can do in order to prevent everything I have from being taken away
from me. And yet, that feeling of helplessness threatens to guarantee it.
I’m powerless.
Was it only a dream in the first place? Was I ever truly happy? Did I ever truly love myself?
If it was always a dream, I don’t want to wake up.
The doubt weighs her down, sinking into the desert sand.
I don’t want to wake up.
Those familiar words are all that fill her mind as she crumbles into the desert sand.