A Teenage Girl’s Guide to the Universe

There’s something about a cool breeze and

familiar routes

and headphones and the eternal comfort of looking down as if the world

were merely the illusion you’re wrapped in.

Death is the one thing that unites us all.

The clouds are gold, and I wonder if God made them that way–

if a god exists at all and if they love us–

because only someone who loves us would make the sky so

beautiful.

Freud believes we create God because our ancestors killed their father,

but then where does a woman’s religion come from?

and Calvin says it’s already determined where we go when we die

nothing we can do to change it.

So why should I care about any of it?

And everyone loses interest once they get to know me

and I haven’t spoken to my childhood best friends in so long

and I need someone—

God?

– to blame or else

there is just some fundamental part of me that is and always will be inherently

unlovable.

There’s a grocery store

a mile away;

I wasn’t sure at first if it was pronounced Weis like

rice or wise?

And the average person needs around two thousand calories a day but sometimes I

convince myself I don’t need anything because

the soul can’t be fed.

Really I’m afraid of dying

because no one knows what comes after;

that’s the thing that the theologians can’t seem

to agree on.

The part of the brain responsible fordreamsremains active for a few minutes after death.

Has the afterlife been inside us

all this time?

Does the deer dead on the side of the road dream?

What of?

Whatever the answer,

I don’t want to end up like that.

The sky is still golden and I can pretend for a moment that life is all a movie and

everything will be okay.

If placebo pills can relieve symptoms then maybe

I can imagine the future and it will come true or maybe

there is a god

and they will hear me.

Freud also says that religion is

wish fulfillment,

so here I am wishing.

I may never be loved the way I so deeply yearn to be,

but also the sky is so beautiful

and life is a movie

and the world is so vast that there must be

something out there waiting to find me

and one day I’ll grow wings but not today

and maybe there are people who love me after all

and I’m not dramatic I’m just a teenage girl

and life feels so stupid but I love it anyway and

There’s always hope.