6/10 (poem)

So many feel like a 6/10,

just barely a pass,

just barely getting by.

One face among a million,

one blade of grass in a field,

one drop of water in the ocean.

Ordinary.

But we define ordinary,

often with ourselves as evidence,

even though our ordinary

may be another's extraordinary.

To ourselves, a flickering candle,

to another, a tempest of flame.

Someone has to be wrong,

right?

Maybe it's wrong to rate

ourselves and others.

Maybe no scale can describe us -

there's just too much.

There are too many stars in the sky to understand,

too many worlds to know,

and galaxies that could never simply be 6/10.

-Zero

Dreaming of more (poem)

Sometimes I feel this life will never fit,

or rather that I will never fit in it.

No matter how I change the characters,

it never gets to how I imagined.

I'm taunted by thoughts of what could be:

there's always room for improvement, right?

Dreaming of the future can go two ways:

dreaming of a life that can come to pass,

and dreaming of a fantasy world that can never be.

The dreamer has to learn the difference,

and I wonder if I can tell them apart,

choose a path forward that leads somewhere.

I think I feel this life will never fit

because I'm suffering from lingering fantasies:

ever after filled with breath-taking beauty

instead of the mediocrity of reality,

a life I would come to destroy.

I'm so sick of living in fantasy.

-Zero

The Cycle of Time (poem)

Time moves in a cycle,

just as summer comes and goes,

returning and departing every year.

When one thing ends, another begins,

and when something begins, another ends.

We like to think time is a straight line

so we can leave our past behind us,

but as time cycles back, as summer returns,

our memories, our past, returns us to them,

prisoners of our own actions.

But time moves forward still,

a wheel rolling down an unending hill,

and we are but one point on the wheel of time,

spinning round and round year by year,

making our way around a moving circle.

As the endless wheel churns,

all things find themselves forgotten.

The memories we sought to escape slowly fade,

slower than our pained hearts would rather,

but time teaches us to heal in the cycle.

Our first summer after will be difficult,

memories cruelly reminding us of how things were.

Our second summer will be better,

odd reminders of a time long past.

And so the wheel churns,

until all is forgotten.

-Zero

Before a First Kiss (poem)

In the moments before a first kiss,

there is an uncertainty in the air:

will it happen?

What happens next?

But we make decisions unknowingly, chasing desire,

we don't know how this will end,

whether we will come to regret it,

so we just blindly hope it ends well.

Too often it ends badly.

Some break apart and return like clockwork,

the repetition of counting seconds driving them mad.

Others fight and shatter picture frames,

the violence in them scarring love forever.

Some are driven apart by the deep whispers,

love turned to shame, guilt, and disgust.

So many of us have yet to see it end well,

yet we endure and dream of better times.

If we were too rash about it,

then we will learn to be too cautious.

I have waited until I was absolutely certain,

only to be left reminded of my foolishness.

After all, if we cannot truly know ourselves,

then how could we ever know the future?

In the moments before a first kiss,

we choose to brave absolute uncertainty,

either out of courage or carelessness,

knowing that it probably won't last.

But no bird learns to fly without trying,

even though they are designed for flight.

So too will we never learn to love

if we are not foolish enough to try.

-Zero