reputation costs

cw: suicide, self harm, vomit

on mobile? turn phone sideways!

perfection used to be so easy but i’m 
just not that person anymore 

bubble pop to comfort everyone to know i’m 
there with them the comfort inherent 

in a high school sleepover but i wasn’t 
supposed to be the one who needed comfort 

then the meds flatlined and i had to create
a system of drinking too much water before 

i went to bed because the need to pee would 
get me up if nothing else 

i wasn’t the perfect happy i grew to love being 
i grew to be loved for being and i thought 

better dead than less than but the blades 
were too dull so i stopped 

threw up my soul into the toilet bowl 
and had to start afresh 

i look back on me with longing 
i’d do anything to go back 

reputation costs trying one thing a day that makes
me happy in conjunction with 5mg of ssri reminding 

myself of what fulfilled me before chasing 
that endlessly like sisyphus on his mountain 

reputation costs—
$18.99

if 2023 was my 1989 era, then the end of 2023 through 2024 was my reputation era, which solidly puts me now, in 2025, in my lover era, an era that knows that i can’t be who i was before reputation. reputation threw a wrench in it all, and all we can do now is accept it: that it happened and the effect it is still having.