How Are You Doing?

How are you doing? They asked me.

What do I say?

Do I say I’m doing good or do I answer honestly?

It’s true some days I’m doing pretty good…

But then there are days where I really don’t know how to answer you..

How are you doing?

I don’t know

If I really stay here and explain all my thoughts, you wouldn’t even know

How to fathom or comprehend the words I’m saying

So I’ll say it’s ok and keep on smiling

How are you doing?

I don’t know

I’m just doing… what I do.

How am I supposed to explain to you the 50 million thoughts tangled in my mind to you?

How am I doing?

I don’t know

I mask up all my feelings.

Cause if I showed them to anyone, I’m afraid it’ll increase the bleeding

I don’t know.

I’ll just bottle it all up in my mind like I do every time because what’s that point of talking when I’ll just be wasting your time.

A lot of it because there is so much of it to tell I could sit with you for hours because once you open the closet doors the mess could spill out for hours

How am I doing?

Truth is I don’t know where to begin…

You want me to talk about today? Or start from the beginning?

I don’t know.

If I open the busting bottle in my mind the tears might flow

But I always thug it out because I don’t want to look weak to you

I don’t know.

Maybe it’s just all my fears, all the dumb stuff that gave me anxiety for all of these years

I don’t know.

Do you wanna talk about trauma and all of the drama, all of the drama that I think could just be karma

I don’t know.

Do you want to talk to me about all of my dreams?

Dreams are like wings they

can take you places no matter how far it may be.

Can they really?

I don’t know, but that’s what I think.

Do you want me to talk about my nightmares?

In that case you mean the ones that refuse to let me sleep

or the ones that I have lived out that my memory disintegrated to protect itself from the pain that it bears.

I don’t know.

You wanna talk about how stupid I feel?

Doing regular stuff makes me tired

it’s stupid

but that’s for real.

I don’t know.

We could talk about a lot of stuff but geez after writing this poem I feel like I’ve already said

Too much

I. don’t. know.

What the heck am I supposed to say when people ask me how I’m doing?

Some days I’m tired of masking while the thoughts are a brewing.

You look into my eyes and ask me how I am doing and what I wanna tell you is that my mind is always spinning.

But I can’t do that because like I said I gotta thug it out

Once I open up myself there isn’t no way out and when I look at the door that you done closed behind me I don’t wanna be stuck one day with you holding a gun right at me…

If I open up my heart I don’t nowhere to start

If I let these people in I hope it wasn’t just a planned break in.

If I show you my dreams and show you all the work I take pride in, I don’t want you to crush it and call it just some garbage.

Because then I’ll believe it but my aspirations is what I am.

I wish it would go away but what other choice do I have?

I don’t wanna share my so called ‘gifts’ when everyone’s better than me.

I don’t wanna share myself if you’re not gonna be down for me.

You ask me how I’m doing

I always say I’m doing fine

Because at the end of the day there’s no point in sharing it if you can’t really feel for what’s going on deep inside.