When I tell you you're beautiful,
I need you to believe me.

I need you to know
That I know what I'm talking about
When I say that I love
Every little nook and cranny
Of your entire being.

You must understand that
I love the way your
Hair parts on the side,
That small wrinkle in your forehead.

That is my wrinkle.
I am the cause of that wrinkle.

I love that sparkle in
Your plain brown eyes.
That cute little nose
Complemented by
Those luscious lips.

Lord, have mercy.

I could go on for
Forever and a day
Just to say the
Same resounding message.

Sweetheart, you're
More than beautiful.

You're heart-stopping.

A mirror is only as good as what you see on its surface
and when what you see isn’t what you want,
you start to wish the mirror was broken,
that someone bought it from a fun house,
that what you see isn’t really you.

You start to avoid the mirrors in your house,
pretending not to worry about how you look,
claiming that you’re not a vain person.
But the truth is, your vanity hides
beneath a layer of disgust
like a sheath of decaying sanity.

You want to curl up,
curl up until you disappear,
because maybe then people would look at you
the way you want them to,
they would look at you fondly,
missing your little quirks and they would say things like,
“They were so beautiful, it’s such a shame.”

But the thing is,
that’s not what happens.
That is not fondness,
it is pity. They feel bad for you,
but they feel no guilt
for how they ignored you.

Disappearing won’t make people look at you.
I thought like that once upon a time,
and sometimes the thoughts still creep in
like little worms trying to eat away at the confidence I have built.

But **** it,
I have worked too hard to go back now.
When I look in the mirror,
I no longer see that layer of disgust
that sheathed my decaying sanity.
Now I look in the mirror and I think,
“****, I look really good.”

I do it anytime I look in the mirror,
because now it’s true.
I believe every word of it,
I finally like what I see.
And if that makes me vain
then I will gladly accept the title.

I have wasted too much time avoiding my own reflection.
For once in my life, I’m finally happy with what I see.
And nobody, nobody, is ever going to take that away from me.

Look at yourself.
Embrace what you see, love it.
If you don’t like it, you can change it.
You can change the cut and color of your hair,
you can change the clothes you put on,
you can exercise and you can eat right,
you can even change the color of your eyes.
All I ask of you is that you don’t hurt yourself in order to change things.

I walk down sugar-coated streets,
stumbling over rumor weeds poking up through the cracks
and fearing the whispers that I think I hear.

I watch the candy people walking around,
******* each other dry one way or another
like leeches with sweet teeth.

They make sour faces,
like ******* lime soda through a Sour Punch Straw,
but they keep *******, because there’s nothing else to do in Candyland.

I have to look really hard to find the sweet people.
The gummy ones, the melt in your mouth chocolate ones.
Sometimes I find them half-eaten and discarded like office lollipops
and sometimes they’re melting under everyone’s Red Hot gaze.

Sometimes I only find wrappers
and I get so angry that I think I might melt myself.
Because these people have been eaten.

******, nibbled, gulped down
like nothing more than a quick Kiss that means nothing.
But no matter how small they were, they still mattered.

They mattered to someone,
but now they’re just slick remnants on cellophane or foil.
And what hurts even more is that I couldn’t save them.

I’m not Princess Bubblegum,
I can’t protect a candy kingdom.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.

Every time I turned my eyes up,
staring at the ceiling to force the tear drops back inside of me
with my hands clasped beneath my chin,
people might have thought that I was praying.

I’m not a religious person
but I think that in my moments of desperation
I’d pray to a ******* ceiling tile
if it would make me feel better.
I’m not that desperate yet,
but if the churning in my stomach
and the burning ache in my chest get any worse
I might just ******* do it.

I’d pray to the dead skies if the clouds would absorb my pain
the same way they absorb the moisture in the air.
I’d pray to the holes in the ceiling above my desk
if I could send my tears up there
instead of having to continually force them back
when my shoulders start to shake.

I’d pray to the jar of paper stars
given to me by someone I thought I’d never be without
if I could be with the friends that truly care about me again.
I’d pray to my car
if it could just take me back home for the weekend on autopilot
so I wouldn’t have to think about concentrating on the road
when all I want to do is go to sleep.

I’d pray to my zombie pillow pet
if it would take away my responsibilities
and allow me to rest for just one whole day.
I’d pray to the pictures of random cats on tumblr
if I could hold my own cats and cry freely into their fur.

Thinking about it,
it’s pathetic how willing I am to pray
for just a little relief from this dark wave
that seems to be rising like a tsunami,
ready to drown me in all the negativity
I thought I had been able to lock away.

When I was young, too young,
I stopped believing in beauty
and all the things that came with it
like hope and trust and
the magic of pixie dust.
I felt the light in my eyes
drain like sand through an hourglass
and no it’s not Days of our Lives
more like Nights Spent Slowly Dying
alone with only our ragged blankets
to keep us warm and breathing.

I got older, and I learned
how to get beauty back.
it wasn’t easy to rewire my brain after so much of it
had corroded and poisoned
but I did it. I learned to
look into a mirror and be okay
with what I saw looking back at me.

Now I’ve tried to share this power
with everyone I meet but it’s
really ******* hard to change
your own mind and trying to
change someone else’s is like
showering at someone’s house and you can’t figure out how the
**** their faucet works.

As I get happier
I run out of ways
to make other people happy
and I find myself choking
on words that mean **** all
to a depressed bulimic or
someone who can’t adjust to college life.
I can’t play therapist anymore.

But I’d cut out my eyes
for a blind man and
I’d give my limbs to amputees.
I’ll donate all my organs,
tear out my heart
and give it to someone
who’s had theirs broken
too many times before.

I would rip my self to pieces
just to save this world,
because how can I love myself
when the world can’t do the same?
What’s the point of being happy
in a world drowning in pain?

Maybe that is the point.
Maybe staying awake
in this sleepy universe
is the shot of espresso
it needs to wake the **** up
and finally smile a little.