That's All There Is

My body throws curses at me when I sit down.
I curl forwards and feel my spine snap in two;
sitting up straight is impossible.
Thick-rimmed glasses slide down my nose
and I let out the breath I've been holding all day.
I wonder if this is it.
Dark circles swim laps around my eyes,
hair falls limply around my shoulders
and splits off at the end in mindless curls
and I wonder if this is it.

I take up too much space
and some days I eat too much
and some days I starve myself to sleep.
I don't know how to write a proper sentence
and I like the word "and" too much,
and I don't fit the grammatical prose of the classical authors
but I'm not inventive enough to call myself new-age.

Is this it?
All I've written today are two paragraphs of self-loathing.
Do I get to call myself a writer for that?
Objectively these lines mean nothing
but it's all about the subjective, isn't it?
Write what you know,
well, fuck you, too.

I take up too much space
but the mug of tea next to me says "keep
calm
and carry on"
because I heard that real authors drink tea
and that's a phrase that most of them would say
but the tea bag is floating at the top, looking sad,
looking like it has given up, and I wonder
if in this example I am the tea bag and I have given up
but that's a pretty shit metaphor,
so I guess I've proven my point.

I can't sit up straight.
Hell, I can't even be straight
and I just bit my lip in two while writing that line
because I feel guilty for the things I did ten years ago
and I would really like to be able to use a better word than "and"
but nothing else conveys the existential reality
of a life that just keeps going and going and going
and I haven't learned to cope with that yet
and I taste blood.

I don't need to be forgiven for existing
but I still feel like I should be.
I still feel like someone was giving out golden tickets
with instructions as to how to carry on from this point
and I called out sick that day.
I still feel like I should be doing more than this,
and that is why I write, I suppose,
and the feelings I have are so specific yet so universal
that nothing I create can carry them across.
My body throws curses at me as we sit with aching bones
because it knows that we will never get this right.