you don’t fkn know me.

you don’t know
i used to run an entire blog when i was sixteen
about how i wished my father would die.

(full chest. prayed that motherfucker—
would freeze in a snowstorm.
fall off a cliff. evaporate.
whatever was quickest.)

you don’t know
i taught myself to code websites from curiosity,
one broken-ass pixel at a time,
locked in my room until 2am.

you don’t know
i wanted to be a photographer so bad
i shot a full suicide girls set for my best friend,
who chain-smoked marlboro reds like it was cardio
and tattooed half her body before we could legally drink.

you don’t know
i used to drive to philly like i had court-ordered community service
in the city of sadness—
just trying to outrun the loneliness
chewing through my ribs that year.

you don’t know
i was wandering around rome
when one of the hottest men i’ve ever seen
stopped,
decided i was inevitable,
and took me on a date right there.

like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

you don’t know
about the men who have written poems about me
just because they sat next to me in class.

(confused how i could be hot and smarter than them)

built me cathedrals with flowers;
just so i would notice them.

(i didn’t)

or the texas boys
that taught me to two step
in the middle of a frat party
in the dining room;

spinning.
like no one was watching.

you don’t know
how many men wrote whole mythologies about me.
(just watching me exist.)

you don’t know
that when i moved to new york city,
me and my best friend split a single sweet potato for dinner
because the metrocard was more important.

you don’t know
i waited tables at a bowling alley for the jonas brothers
and thought they were just some homeschool kids with bad haircuts.

(but that’s kinda the vibe… right?)

you don’t know
about the night i accidentally ended up backstage with steve aoki
in atlantic city —
because my best friend was shamelessly hot (and a baby)
and i spent half my life trying to fight off the men
who thought they could take a piece of her.

you don’t know
i got shipped off to texas (safety)
for those summers
like someone trying to return a defective product.

where the heat glued itself to my skin,
where my uncle taught me to surf baby waves
on the gulf of mexico.

(yes, of mexico, for the geographically illiterate gremlins.)

you don’t know
i grew up in those texas and louisiana summers,
mowing lawns and inhaling safety
that tasted like grass clippings, diesel fuel,
and generational disappointment.

you don’t know
i drank butter tea
in the dalai lama’s temple in exile
while he spoke about compassion.

(didn’t feel holy.)

you don’t know
the night i spent in a domestic violence shelter
as a child.

(not that you give a fuck.)

you don’t know
how survival stitches itself into your bloodstream
like a parasite
you eventually start calling a personality.

you don’t know
my first real loss was a girl i met in second grade—
re-found over cheap clothes and worse parties—
who i promised myself i’d say hi to outside the library.

(i was leaving for college.
i thought i had time.)

there wasn’t a next time.
she died in a car crash a week later.

i carried that forever.

you don’t know
i dropped out of my freshman year
because i could feel myself slipping under
and honestly didn’t want to stick around for the autopsy.

you don’t know
i fought my way into texas when everyone said i wouldn’t—
ran like a fucking animal
being chased by predators.

you don’t know
i rode on the backs of motorcycles
owned by men who should’ve been in jail.

(just to feel something.)

you don’t know
that half the people still watching me
aren’t witnesses — they’re parasites.

the kind of roaches
who resent what they can’t become.
who confuse proximity with relevance.
who mistook being close enough to overhear my life
for having a part in it.

you don’t know me.
you never did.

so it’s honestly lowkey embarrassing—
how you thought this story somehow revolved around you.

sweetheart;
you never even read the cliffnotes for idiots.