When you have sat so long with a dinner knife and fork poised around your neck, how can you not expect to be eaten?

If your stomach growls and you are told all your life to remain silent, how do you know when to start speaking for yourself?

When your ribs practically carve themselves, pushing into the soft canvas of your skin, screaming to get out, and you have been told you do not deserve to eat - how do you know when you should?

How did you ever know you had the option to begin with?

And when you figure it out, how can they not expect anything less than anger? How can they not expect fear, distrust?

They can't seem to decide what you are.

You've been treated as a kenneled hound dog all your life, been told that baring your teeth was wrong, been told that you bark too loudly, sit too widely.
You've been treated as a show dog, led around on the arm of someone, never to look, never to breathe, never to think. To start dogfights. They laugh in their booths with money raised in clenched fists - it's entertainment and their bet is on whoever's teeth is the sharpest but both of you have had your teeth filed down for generations. Still, you fight, because it is all you've known.

You've been trained to not even be perceived as human, to not even perceive yourself as human, had orders barked at you your whole life but when you try to protest, you're told that you are arrogant and selfish.

Even then, some of them will continue the slow march of bringing the silverware ever closer, metal scraping against the table because they see the fight as a challenge. They like to play with their food, it's tag and you're it. You can pretend all you want that you're the main course, the whole meal, but that doesn't change that you will still, in the end, get ripped apart. Ripped to shreds, to pieces, violated even further when you thought it could never happen. That it could never get worse.

People tell you that they are just as much victims. They need the money from betting to survive, even if it's from betting on losing dogs with dull teeth and dull eyes. They tell you that you need to love them more and they will be kinder. That they will stop treating you the way they have. That they will stop being entitled.

But all you've ever done is loved, loved with your entire being, and nothing has ever changed.

You are the only one who I will let undo the zipper down my back, ever so carefully, your fingers working overtime, and I can feel them trailing down my spine, so fine, so fine. Your gaze is so steady and determined, and sometimes I can't make eye contact, but I do my best. Forgive me, I wasn't dressed for being undressed. For being addressed so directly, I'm used to confrontation, and your care disintegrates every part of me that was angry at, and tired with, the world. I don't know how to respond sometimes to the love you give me, unused to being able to get so close, to be so close. To be able to lift my face and drink in your features without being scolded, and I am ever so thirsty.

Eggs and toast on a plate for you
Didn’t you know you were hungry, too?
Starving until I could see right through you

Did you know I can see your bruises
Opened up, ******, blue wounds and
You stayed up and stared at my room’s walls

Trying to fall asleep and I know
You can’t just let it all go
It’s gonna hurt you if you don’t
But you can’t go home

Your shoulders are bare now
You tell me you’re scared of yourself
But what if I told you
That it’s not your fault

You thank me for small things
When I barely do
Everything that I can, I can do for you

Trying to fall asleep and I know
You can’t just let it all go
It’s gonna hurt you if you don’t
But you can’t go home

I know you’re not used to the love I have for you
I know you’re not used to not being abused
And I can’t forgive, forgive who did this to you
Even though it’s not my fight, do you know I’d fight for you

I saw you standing there, in fields of vision
There were clovers at your feet
You were holding a bouquet
Your face held rosy cheeks

I drank you in with the liquid sunshine
As flowers bent their heads
They were showered with praise
But I got insults instead

The storm clouds then started rolling in
And you were so afraid
Thorns started swallowing you up
But you said you'd be okay

Airwaves affecting our actions
Dissatisfaction guarantees
Money back disagrees
Buying happiness with ease
What an Amazonian tease

I'm in love with your skeleton, I'm in love with your bones
I love your tongue and your teeth, your flesh and your ghost
But the thing that I hate, is the one I hate the most
When you disappear into thin air, leaving me alone

A girl was walking home, and the skies were getting darker, someone had scribbled the skies out with a black marker
The wind kicked up, and the leaves swirled on the sidewalks, above the girl was a circle of hawks
The dreary weather made her hurry home and she bit her lip but she was stopped by a small, stray strip of paper that flattened itself against her chest
She stopped, for a moment, to catch her breath, picking it up, she read:
‘You will soon achieve perfection’
It belonged to a fortune cookie, that should tell her it was lucky, but she didn’t want any of it
‘I don’t want perfection, I’m just wonderful the way I am, any other type of perfection besides self love is just a type of sham’
The shadows behind her began to stir, and she was too late to cover her ears as they whispered to her
‘You’ve put on a lot of weight and you’re slow, you’re ugly enough and that’s such a crime, you should be on death row’
She looked down at her stomach and hastened her gait, she ignored the shadows as she quickened her pace
‘I know I may not look like much, but I have everything I need. Go away, I’m not to be bothered today’
The shadows continued to follow her, almost as a race
They slithered up brick and stone walls alike on whichever buildings she passed and continued to whisper their little lies into her fragile heart, their voices sweet as pies on a summer day, but she ignored them, continued on her way
‘I have friends who love me no matter what I may seem’ she smiles, and the shadows laugh
‘If you say we tell lies, then what is that? Lies of how they don’t pity you dearly because you’re always lonely if not for them, they see you, clearly, and use you up, throw you away like garbage because that is what you are. They tried to fix you, tried to make you a shining star, but you were hopeless. Are useless, because you can’t do anything on your own, you can’t even get it right when you’re alone.’
The sky began to tear, it began to spill it’s tears just as the girl spilled hers - accompanied by the countless fears that everything everyone had told her had been right
She had done her best to ignore the doors that shut when she walked past them, the whispers and giggles that followed her around like monsters in the hall, tried to ignore the walls she built up for herself because she did her best to let people in, never shoving them out, always forgiving because that’s what she had decided to be about
Of the boys that asked her out every day just so they could walk away, hands in their pockets, shrugging and saying ‘Oh, what a loss’
The girls that turned their faces away when she passed because they couldn’t stand to “look at that,” she was dehumanized past the point of any reason, every dig on her because they saw her as a pig, eating slops from the ground, less than nothing, never amounting to something because of her weight
Her loneliness they all attributed to her looks even though her heart had always been in the right place
Don’t you think she knows?
Don’t you think she knows what the world thinks?
Don’t pretend you don’t know she thinks because she’s told, she belongs in a slaughterhouse with the rest of the corpses of animals
That the way she chews is too loud, but no matter what they said no matter what, she was proud, because she was who she was, and she didn’t care, ignored the stares every day because loneliness is a camera that blurs the background to both reality and happiness, and sharply focuses on just you  
She stopped her walk in her galoshes to the front door, stains on her shirt from a food fight where it had really just been her against everyone else
‘I am already perfect’ She said, and she opened the door, wiped her boots on the rug, stepped into her slippers of crimson red, she went upstairs
Her mother was there, downstairs, cooking supper for just the pair of them
The girl sits on her bed for a second
Thinks of what all she could do
Weapons and medications, what to run from, what to overdose on
But supper
But
But supper was done
Her mother called from below and she hurried down because no matter what perfection was, she didn’t care for a moment
She wiped the rims of her eyes on her sleeve, wearing her heart in the same space, always had been in the right place, still determined to give the entire world everything she had
Because today, at least for one more day, she would live