I wrote this piece while I was in high school, but it has become relevant to me again. It's a dialogue about wanting to be good enough for somebody but always falling short. It's fueled by jealousy and anger towards the person that matters more than you do to somebody else and the thoughts that maybe if you were just a little more like that person, you'd finally be worth something.

Old Thoughts, Renewed

I can feel it all falling apart.

I do not know how to fix this,

Become a newer model,

be a little more like her.

Ambitious, beautiful, new and full of promise.

I could at least come in second place, the race gets old when you're barely pushing for last.

Maybe I wouldn't have been passed by in the first place.

Just an old race car, abandoned on the race track to rot.

Cheers from an audience full of ghosts playing through battered radio speakers and broken tuning dials.

I am nothing but scrap metal waiting for salvagers.