it's called the teenage dream

because you’d have to be asleep

to believe it

i didn’t come up with that

in 2010 katy perry told me

that you and i will be young forever

i suppose that was her teenage dream

but she was 10 years too old and i 10 years too young

to know what that truly meant

and now as my face fights against itself

and my spine stretches my flesh up with it

my voice breaks when i sing along

knowing that youth is a double-edged sword

and my friends have cut their wrists with it

but who am i to judge the actions of broken people

when my trauma is trying

to put them back together

too hard

or not hard enough

knowing that they’ll only miss me if they try

maybe heathers is right

the most important decision a teenager can make

is whether or not to kill themselves

and my decision to be here

is wrong

but that’s wrong too

because i’m freed from the apathy of my mind

when i see the brilliance

of someone else's

louisa writes better poetry than i ever will

every word purposeful

and when she presents it in class

her face lights up

because she has found

her purpose too

maybe the teenage dream

is only as real

as the people who live it

and the poems

i write about it