I can already see you laughing at this. Pathetic, you'll say. Just teen angst. But pffffft. I shun you if you shun my poem.

So, I'm iron deficient and my hair's falling out.
Also, my eyesight went down .50 bringing it down to a blind -3.00.
My mom tells me to sleep. So does my dad. In a moment of desperation, I wrote a poem. I hate my poems. I can never find rhythm or rhyme.

Glimmering sunsets and firefly nights

Pass by me in a haze I can’t define.

You tell me to sleep

You lay the choices flat out in front of me:

Rest or rename my Ambition to The Story in Which the Author Loses Her Sanity and Hair.

Climbing into the covers,

I close my eyes.

In the perfect, sterile darkness my dreams snake around me,

Binding my ankles,

Constricting my breath.

They’re misplaced prophesies,

Expectant futures named for the wrong person.

The dreams I can’t live up to.

They’re the questions I can’t answer,

And the answers I can’t face.

So you tell me to sleep.

But I can’t face the darkness.