Ask Me Anything

This poem is about how totally separate emotions can feel identical inside your body, and how hard that can be to deal with.

Ask Me Anything

Katy Scott
2025

What did you have for breakfast?
How does the rain make you feel?
How many petals are on this flower?
Does she love you, or love you not?

Are you happy?
I don’t believe you, answer again. Are you happy?
Yet you are always so sad.

Can two opposing things be true at once?

What is wrong with you? You don’t seem sad enough.
Why can’t you cry?
It’s fine, you shouldn’t.
Don’t you understand that people depend on you?

You mentioned grief; are you comforted by your grief?
Because you seem to be sharing it with everyone.
Here’s the real question:
Are you really grieving, or do you just want attention?

Are you feeling any rage at that question?

Do you need to feel some comfort at this point in the questioning?
Try to think of something beautiful, familiar, incandescent.
Perhaps the night sky, pine scented air on a cold wet morning,
that poem about rats’ feet over broken glass?

How do you feel about that squeezing hollowness inside of your heart?

Is it like:
A brokenness you can’t explain?
Getting kicked in the chest over and over and you can’t find your breath?
Indescribable beauty and heartache existing in the same tight space?

Ahh, there it is, there is your answer.
There’s the core of it all.
Beauty hurts as much as sadness, doesn’t it?

Sometimes you can’t stand to look at the stars.