dear diary my expectations are at war with reality

>>> a poem

i shrieked into a void also known as the threads app last night to request poetry prompts. oh jeez by golly, the humans of threads delivered!! here is the resulting prompt-inspired poem:

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dear diary my expectations are at war with reality

dear diary i am a forest. my love for all things extending
like roots of a hundred-year-old cedar. empathy like moss
clinging to wet rock. i am a hemlock split in half, exposed rings
circling where each departed lover once traced fingertips
across bare skin, in some other lifetime.

dear diary i am every season and the liminal
space in between them. my breath the sweater weather
nibbling on your earlobe just to prove that summer
is not immortal, and neither are you and i. but the trees
already know that, and they never judge. dear diary i am a crocodile

lucid dreaming, one moment dancing atop clouds the next wading
waist-deep in a river of my own saltless tears. if you offered me a sip
of nepenthe i would guzzle the entire goblet. if you aren’t crushed
by the vastness of it all you probably haven’t thought about it
long enough.

dear diary i have been looking for home my entire life
but all i got was this t-shirt two sizes too small and a palmful
of clues. home is the last living member of a near-extinct species and
she took her last breath while you read this poem. dear diary i am certain

that a Christmas miracle can happen any day of the year and i’d like
to have breakfast with God, though i swear i’m not religious. to get dizzy
with self-love and vanity over cocktails then paint exactly where their
lines blur. invite my child self to the table and whisper: feast on art
instead of boys. dear diary my expectations are at war with reality and

someone spiked the punchline. i am a butterfly pinned to a cutting
board and the warm breeze wafting through half-open kitchen
window, white paint peeling off the sill.

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i asked an AI generator for an image based on the poem’s title and this was born:

epfation hahaha

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the poetry prompts i used & their humans:

• “dear diary i am a forest” try to describe ur inner self emotions and thoughts like trees in a forest - @cas3y_writes

• the rings of a broken tree exposed - @titlelesspoetry

• expectations and reality - @fatema__.01

• christmas miracle - @20_camellia

• vanity - @20_camellia

• nepenthe - @canutattdis

• the definition of what home means to you - @britt.mccauley

• crushed - @sueanngleason

• the trees never judge - @neinplanets

• saltless tears - @caitlinscove

• things you would say to the “you” of the past - @giulialidia

• a dreaming crocodile - @nina.brescak

• dancing on clouds - @mylo.writes

• sweater weather - @wordsbyraghav

• butterfly pinned to the cutting board - @lindseylavaughn

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

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♥ my website (poetry books & prints)