Few poems begin as bluntly as "Not everybody wants to exist." The line is flat and unadorned, and it sets the terms for everything after it: a speaker worn down by "too much pain - too much everything," who describes distress in plain words. The title adds a second layer. "#FailedArtist Deleted Everything" suggests, though the poem never says so outright, that the speaker has erased their own work or online presence. The hashtag turns a private verdict of failure into something that looks like a social media label.
The poem's central idea is the distance between an inner collapse and the small, ordinary things that set it off or go unanswered. The long fourth line, with its repeated "anxiety over," shows this well. It starts with "the nothing," which is vague and unnameable, then moves to "the washing," "the cooking" and "the shopping." These are chores that most people barely notice, and the repetition makes them pile up like a to-do list that never shrinks. The line runs on past its edge, so "anxiety / over the shopping" spills onto the next line, and then the list ends on "anxiety about waking up." That is the darkest item, and the placement makes it the one the whole list has been building towards.
Break words recur through the poem. A "broken keyboard" can "break a mind," a phone call "breaks reality," and the speaker later calls themselves a "broken kid." The echo links a small, practical failure to a much larger one, and it shows a mind where everything seems fragile. The keyboard also quietly connects to the title's world of creating and posting. Judging by the imagery, the tools of making art have become sources of dread.
The middle of the poem describes losing control. "Impulsive rage implodes without notice" is an unusual choice: the rage collapses inward rather than exploding outward, and the sound of "implodes" and "notice" gives the line a clipped, sudden feel. What follows is "a mist of confusion and a loss of memory," where the soft image of mist suggests the speaker cannot see back through what happened. The next line describes "cutting moments like a surreal vignette." A vignette is a small, framed scene, and "cutting" sounds like film editing, but it also has a sharper edge. Memory comes in clipped fragments, with gaps in between. The poem's form copies this. Nearly every line is a single sentence, mostly short, ending in a full stop, and there is no rhyme and no steady metre. The result is free verse that feels like a series of separate statements rather than a flowing argument.
Then the poem turns outward. "Embarrassed, honest, apologetic too" reads like the speaker describing their own tone, and then comes the direct address: "Would have been so easy for you to reply." The "you" is never named, which makes the accusation hang in the air. The words "so easy" are the most pointed in the poem, because they set one small action against the speaker's whole list of burdens. The next line, "To help a broken kid," is incomplete as a sentence and trails off, as if the speaker cannot finish the thought. Straight after, "But, I understand that I'm a scary mess" shows self-blame arriving fast, as though the speaker must excuse the silence on the other side.
The ending is the most puzzling part. "Just feel blessed to exist in a time like this" could be sincere, ironic, or a line the speaker is trying to talk themselves into, and the small word "just" makes it sound like advice from someone else. "The struggles and the success" sits oddly beside a title about failure. Then "the emptying hand of fate" gives us an image of something draining away, which is followed by the final line, "You were always in control." That sentence contradicts the idea of fate and hands the power back to the unnamed "you." It leaves the poem with no comfort or resolution, only an accusation.
The poem matters because of its honesty. It doesn't decorate pain with elaborate metaphors. It uses the language of daily life, such as phones, keyboards, washing and replies, to show how unbearable an ordinary day can feel. If any of its feelings seem familiar, the reply the poem is asking for is worth giving, or seeking, from someone you trust.