It has been my honour to be loved by you

A man I don’t know walks up to me at work and hands me a bible, says he’s been watching me, that I look like I could use some help and that I seem upset all the time.

Maybe I'm upset because

At work a man tells me getting high will relax me before *** that it will "make it easier"
A man calls me sugar **** while I walk  to the bathroom
A man follows me to the bus stop and asked for a smile
My uneasy eyes a neon invitation for a catcall
“A woman’s work is never done” whispered to me in the produce section of a grocery store
While I walk to go on my lunch break a man asks if I will f*ck his friend “ You can eat him!”
What’s your name?
I like your hair
What are you reading?
Can I sit here?
You got a boyfriend?
I can bang you straight
Do you need help with that?

I don’t need help from a man when a man is my biggest issue, not even god could fix this.

Pull me apart until I am nothing but bone and stardust
Cut me with your words
10,000 little cuts
Hold be tightly in your arms and beg for me

There is no light here
In the wanting
It is dark and lonely
I am red and raw and angry
I hold my breath until I am just a memory
My bones are not yours
There is no place for you here
I will not catch you
I will not die here

When I die
Scatter my ashes from the tops of great mountains
Watch me finally become a bird
Absolutely free
I will sit in meadows with the birds and the bees
I will become the sun and I will shine down on your sweet freckles and you will know that you are not alone

When I see a woman read a menu like it’s a investigation report I get sad
They search for calorie content and carb counts
Is it gluten free?
Keto?
Paleo?
Elimination friendly?
I think of how unhappy they must be to put themselves through that
comatose your body to numb your mind
It breaks my heart to see little girls excited to go on diets
Boy’s only love skinny girls
That’s a fact
The hunger that rages in their hearts is too much to bar
No one wants to watch a live stream of a woman crying because she is starving herself
Screaming because she gained it all back
People don’t like pictures of women embracing their bodies
That kind of feminism isn’t welcome here
People want detox teas and cream’s that hide stretch marks
Apps for cheat days and tracking charts
Eliminate this to get that
Love is for the thin we all know it
Run this far to reach your dreams
They call it skinny love for a reason
It’s never enough
Just a taste

I remember sitting in a car looking at your wrist
White ribbon wrapped around it
When I asked you what happened the car went silent
All I could hear was that question racing through my mind
What happened?
We were sitting in a grocery store parking lot when I first found out you wanted to die
The sky was blue and we didn’t know what to have for supper
I can’t remember how it came to this
I don’t know why you feel so broken
But now I am broken too
I can still see the exact parking spot we sat in and cried
I avoid it like the plague
Mom was heartbroken
I am heartbroken
You were numb
I was in the back seat of a silver mini cooper the moment I truly found out what heartache feels like
My world crashed around me
At night when I hear you cry I feel like I’m back in that car asking
What happened
When I see the scar on your wrist I think of every sharp object in the house and I want to burn it all
I can’t see a band-aid without thinking about you
Can’t drive over a bridge without counting the times I almost lost you
I wish I could cradle your heart in my hands and make everything okay again
I still ask myself what happened sometimes but now the answer seems even farther away from me
I thank every god
Every leaf
Every tiny living creature that you are still with me
My dear sweet sister
I love you.

A quiet girl looks at herself in her bathroom mirror
She touches her lips wondering where her courage went as she stains them ruby red  
Quiet girl stands on the bus
Not at the back
Never at the back
She watches people stare out the foggy windows
making up stories about them
A doctor
A lawyer
A broken heart
She doesn’t want to be seen only see
Quiet girl stands in amazement at how so many quiet conversations make such a loud voice in her head
Stories of lost loves and newfound adventure make for much better entertainment than a phone screen
She sees a woman weeping not crying
Never crying
Quiet tears fall from her eyes like peaceful waterfalls
Her eyes speak to the girl
She understands
She names the weeping woman
Lucy
Lucy listens to sad music and likes to eat cherry pie
She is a woman of wonderings
A dreamer
She sits at the back of the bus
legs crossed
The girl watches small sounds escape lucy’s ruby red lips like morse code  
Faint cries for help
quiet girl watches Lucy curl herself smaller into her seat as the man next to her expands his hungry reach
Quiet girl watches lucy’s eyes scream so loud she can hear it
She offers her a glance of understanding of shared fear
But this is her stop and she’s late for school
She gets off the bus and watches lucy drive away
She should have known better the quiet girl thought
Never sit at the back of the bus