Wandering around the market,
Full of nothing and lacking
The kind of humanity I used to have.
My eye caught by the red-pink
Of the raw meat in a glass case.

I found myself staring at it,
Almost a familiar sight.
Thinking nothing of it at all,
I continued staring.
Something about it stuck to me.

The way the white fat ran through
Pink and red muscle tissue.
The big areas of redness struck me,
Slightly jagged and misshapen.
And juice pooling under it.

The animal was given no thought,
Not other than how it served people.
Its body parts were nothing more than dishes,
Ones for the pleasure of the strong to eat.
There were no animals in this market.

Here laid the former cows,
Their parts separated and sorted.
How convenient to be on display,
To be freshly cleaned and wrapped.
No pieces flawed or ruined.

Oh to be a slab of meat,
Nothing of your former self,
Born to die to feed people,
Or thrown out once you've gone bad.
I suppose I am not far from it.

How can they say what MY nature is?
That what I was born with dictates my temperament.
I must nurture and endure the pain,
Allowing my body to be distorted and bloated,
All for some husband to have a mini-him,
And to add to my constant laboring.
Men socialized to treat a wife like a mother,
Coddled and fawned over by her,
Allowed to come back from work to a home cooked meal,
While their wife's endless work never ceases.

I am a nameless creature so fluid,
Never the same from day to day.
I pinned myself down too soon,
On a whim I named myself.
It was the wrong time for it,
I was not ready and didn't think.
Now I am 17,
No longer the scared 13 year old I was.
The name I chose was wrong.
My parents detested it too much,
And it just wasn't mine.
I know no name shall feel like mine,
Not more than a few months,
But that's okay with me.
I will pin myself down again,
My name is now Max.
It may stick,
It may not.

No one sees the useless old thing,
Perhaps a trophy from an old hunting trip,
Or a once prized possession of a collector.
Anything you can think of may fit,
But we all know what it was:
A plain old barn owl collecting dust
Upon the shelf of some antique store.
Killed and stuffed as decoration,
Passed around by its previous owners,
Re-gifted endlessly due to its unsettling gaze.
No one cared as its body ceased moving,
And its wonderful feathers became drenched
In its blood and the dew upon the grass.
Forever the bird will be posed upon its stand.
A whisper of its former freedom and glory.
No one will see how it should've been,
Only what it is now:
In the corner of the antique store collecting dust.

I am not sure why I did it,
Well that's what I'm going to say
Once I get caught with it.

Because we all know it'll happen.
I know why I stole the thing,
It's not very simple to explain:

The memories wouldn't stop,
I wanted some control over my life,
The urge needed to be fulfilled,

But the general, easy explanation:
I wanted to do it,
I have waited so long.

It's not like me to steal,
At least that's what they think.
I've thought about this for so long.

I contemplate doing many things:
So many horrible things,
Things I'd rather die than do.

I want to scream and cry,
Throw things, flip tables,
Show them how I really feel.

But I don't,
I keep up my reputation,
Smile through all of it.

I don't let anyone know,
If they knew half of it,
I would have no one.

The funny part about this
Is that I don't regret it at all,
I know I should.

I don't regret it,
Relief instantly washed over me,
Like the sick being I am.

I stare at this form,
This cursed effeminate object.
I trace my fingers over soft skin,
Halting at the bumps on it.
The fingers gouge them out,
Mindlessly ripping the imperfections away.
I graze it again,
Only to extract more skin.
Pieces of flesh under my nails,
Small blood drops form in place of the bump.
I see my form beneath the shed layers.
My angelic, ****** form
Finally breathes the air of this world.
I pull more and more,
Once mere crumbs of flesh become chunks.
Slowly freeing my holiness
From the cage of flesh around me.
The blood runs down my face,
Now tattered and gone.
I stare at myself.

The stains won't leave me,
Cracked paint against the drywall
Of my childhood bedroom.
The ****** t-shirt,
Dyed a brown-red to hide the stains.
Spilled paint from a failed project
On the knee of my jeans,
Covered with a pretty floral patch.
They like how it looks,
The new color I had to choose,
Only one that would cover the failures.
It's so pretty and unique,
So nice to look at isn't it?
I add patches that others like.
I'm not so sure that I like them.
At least not as much as they do,
The ones who gave me the stains.