Self-Love: Terms & Conditions Apply

Your sermons of self-love —

do you write them down

just to leave paper trails

for a jury of your own delusions?

Do you scream them into the ether

hoping some burnt-toast soul

with fermented self-esteem

will echo your Alzheimer’s

and mirror your lullabies

long enough to believe

they were ever truths?

Is that why your tribe of headless prophets

keeps chanting each other’s lies —

like drug addicts in an orgy of false dawns,

touching tongues and calling it scripture?

Tell me:

Could you read those affirmations

out loud to your own reflection,

at the break of dawn, barefaced,

without looking away?

Could you whisper them

through that reptilian tongue of yours

without gagging on the weight

of everything you never really believed?

You’re not a preacher.

You’re a performance.

A masquerade of curated greatness

born not of love,

but of abandonment.

You were raised on conditional love —

so now you crave the unconditional

from people

who only arrived with clauses.

And when they left

(as they always do),

because your terms bent for theirs,

you mourned

not the loss of them —

but the reminder

that you never loved yourself

in the first place.

This charade you sell —

you think no one notices?

You think your forked tongue

can hide your toothlessness?

You think your alphabet soup of affirmations

can mask the sour stench

of a life that’s never known conviction?

You —

and your pack of imagined heroes —

are not rebels.

You’re cowards in couture,

peddling self-worth

like expired perfume.

And for all your noise,

you still need a crowd to clap

before you believe your own lines.

So scream your mantras.

Tattoo your delusions.

Polish your pity into power.

But don’t you dare call it truth —

not when your voice still trembles

without a witness.

Because self-love that needs an audience

was never love.

Maybe an advertisement for it, at best.

And you?

You’re no hero

You're a pretentious entrepreneur 

selling your breakdown

as a fucking breakthrough

and hoping someone's gullible enough to sponsor.

Mic dropped. Lie sold.

Next addict, please.