or varicose veins
to those doctors definitists with or without them
me i call mine “disconcerting” and “homely” they are not
the result of poor diet
lack of exercise a weak heart
or a passive cardiovascular system
but of heritage and pedigree and
a genetic lottery i did not win
up the inside of my thighs crawl pale distorted crags
and newborn ruddy lightning
a bloodied patchwork of stretch marks that drag
themselves up to the cradle of my pelvis
and wrap clumsy arms around my hips
my legs await the distortion and corruption of time
yet at seventeen have already begun their heady work
long twisting and sickly a grotesque lace
of my veins pushes through bland mole speckled skin
to emerge disgusting and putrid
like the terrors of children’s nightmares
terrifying not for tooth and nail
but the rotten repulsive pelt
my mental soliloquy before my audience (the mirror)
is a series of silent pleas and malcontented muttering
would that i were slimmer there thinner here
more graceful and pleasing to the idle eye
smooth skinned and dewy eyed
not thick and tired and slow
a little more color and vigor to sallow white skin
more beauty more beauty more beauty more beauty more beauty
i tell myself my self conscious vanity my self disgust
is a product of patriarchy and objectification
that i am and always will be a mind not a body
that if i let myself be this way i am shallow
and conceited and vain and no amount of arguing with myself
will decrease my superficial nature if i care about appearances
dressing up is a way of making myself externally attractive
and hiding the internal eternal abyss
the eyeliner attempts
are only a way to draw eyes to mine because i want them to look
into these innervated wastelands and see something attractive
but i am falling into that abyss of shallow
existence and slipping into a weak and meaningless soul
that can be washed away in the flood of the masses
read jung and freud tear through sun tzu and nietzsche and forget
about the poor player who struts and frets their hours upon the stage of life
who wanted to be pretty
wanted to know beauty
wanted to dig into themselves
and come up with fistfuls of worth

i don’t want you here
i want you gone
once i wrote of demons in mirrors
and i called them myself
but trading stares with that same pair of eyes
i should have looked past
to the monsters behind the iris
and above the neck