how the globe works.

Why do we wrap pity up in soft boxes and pretend it's a gift?

Why do we run red lights and why do kids smoke cigarettes and what is pity?

Why do we loiter in parking lots after businesses close and why do I blame myself for the external things?

I hate Instagram and I cringe when couples make collages

and today the baby asked me why my stomach hurt and I promised to tell her when she was older,

but what if I don't follow through on that promise?

I won't be mad at myself for it and maybe that's why the world is corrupt.

Corrupt.

It's not corrupt.

It's anything but corrupt.

It's got backwards values and upside down hours,

but it loves to make music and it hears every hum and every song from the shower.

The world will never stop listening to your gunshot wounds and your late night hikes.

It knows the bite marks on your pencil better than you did.

And it feels heartburn and halcyon and draws lines with the trees

and drops paint on people to help them find each other.

The world is made of innocents and criminals

but mostly made of the in-betweens who we call sinners, 

and they keep loving God

or don't.

It's made of stomach ulcers and kidney stones and diabetics

with eye contact as the key to forgetting all the reasons you can't love a person.

The world has green eyes and people keep mistaking them for brown

but all babies look the same when they're born and maybe the world can take credit for that.

And a four-year-old just asked me why I sleep alone, 

she asked if I got scared in that big bed by myself and I told her it didn't matter.

Maybe adulthood sucks because the world's just getting back at us for all the lies we tell kids.

The world plays music from 25 years ago and 250 years ago and loves every beat,

every dead instrument.

It makes ex-lovers still lovable 

and writes imaginary lists in your mind for rule-breaking.

It sends currents through heartbeats, in the form of mutual interests

and it loves to tie magnets to our feet and make leaving difficult.

The world has had 196 broken hearts, while still lacking insecurities.

and it watches the clubs burn down as the alcohol levels go up. 

It still loves every bloodshot eye and carried every nauseas off-the-shoulder sweatshirt to bed.

The world still loves me, 

even with my plans to drop this garbage on its soil and pretend like America is free for my trash 

and orange juice tastes better in the morning because the world decided that.

If you think the world is corrupt,

you're watching reruns of the firework artists that got too comfortable with explosives,

you're thinking of the shotguns and the elementary hallways on December 14th, 2012

and you're thinking of the babies that never saw those hallways

and the alcohol that put everyone underground.

And if you woke up in a bed, in a house, and ate breakfast

then the world is not a nuclear weapon

your house is not a bomb shelter.

You have no right to hide from the trees, the world rarely lets them move.

You have no reason to run from the bright eyed people, the world won't let them kill you.

And you have no reason to stay indoors,

it isn't good for your health.