Tell it Like it is

Tell it like it is: tell the six AM alarm in the morning “fuck you” before rolling over in bed. Pull yourself together. Do your makeup at 6:10 before you can open your eyes. Pull your shit together. Sit at the table in your kilt and laced-up shoes while you swallow a spoonful of pills, a spoonful of vitamins, and leave your cereal with the spoon in the bowl. Tell your friends - the ones at your lunch table, the ones who drive you places.  Don’t tell them everything, don’t tell them anything. Pull yourself together.

Tell it like it is: tell the headache to go away but you can’t because it’s noon on a Saturday. Pull your shit together. Tell the friends who you call when the world is spinning again. Pull yourself together. Tell yourself it’s fine, tell yourself to put in your headphones and listen to the lines ringing in your ears and don’t leave your bed yet. Breathe one-two inhale and exhale to the music, tell yourself to drink some more water. Your father’s yelling at you from behind the locked door. Don’t tell him everything, don’t tell him anything.

Tell it like it is: tell stories of the summer to the friends who laughed with you on the paved sidewalks, who ran in the ocean at one-o’clock and you didn’t know what was behind the midnight waves. Talk when you forgot what you were saying. Pull yourself together. Here’s to being fine, here’s to out of your mind. Tell the boys who put you on their shoulders at Festival Pier thanks, talk to the Uber driver and the kids in the seat behind you on the Paoli-Thorndale line, tell the night that you love it. But don’t tell it everything, don’t tell it anything. Watch the fireflies appear on the train tracks as you go from the city back to reality. Tell people you’re tired. Don’t think about pulling your shit together anymore.