POEM: I Am My Patterns

My old notebooks and journals

Look too much like the ones I’m writing in now.

Though words are different,

I’m older now, of course,

And people and places have changed,

I am just as fucked up as I ever was.

Doing all the same old fucked up things.

Just in marginally different ways.

A reboot barely even trying to feel fresh.

A sequel that reminds us of all the worst bits of the first one.

The background of a sprinting cartoon.

I am nothing more than a pattern of behaviour and thought,

Replicating and repeating.

A childhood trauma fossilised in amber,

Wrapped and repackaged in new clothes,

Pretending to be all grown up.