Peel off your skin.
Look at you.
Your mind is gushing from every vein, every slit.
Your fears are being milked from the exposed flesh.

This is you, my friend.
You have been disfigured and morphed into something you don't recognize.
Scabs are cracked open to reveal secrets only you could be selfish enough to cover.

Your blood drips off the tip of your nose at a steady pace;
As you, my friend, watch your face melt into a sink.
You are disgusting but this is you, and
You
Are
Alive.

Friend, you are perfectly honest;
No carbon copies made.
You let yourself bleed and flood this house,
Because that's all you've ever wanted.
You've finally escaped the cage of bones and skin that silenced you.

You alive and you are free.

"Keep that up and you'll end up like your mother."

I couldn't understand this message.
This strange jumble invented by my relative.
Keep what up?
What was I doing?

Eating.
I was chomping on a dessert that my aunt had prepared tenderly.
I was at peace with the world
but my uncle's comment left me distraught.

End up like my mother?
That's all I've ever wanted.
My beautiful, kind, selfless, assertive mother.
She was clever as a fox and delicate and a pink pedal.
End up generous and strong?
Yes please!

Still,
This man watching me eat,
Says it as if it is something to avoid.
There wasn't a correlation that could be made in my mind.

Years later,
I revisited the scene,
Only to have my heart weep for that small girl.
That tiny, confused child quietly nibbling on her cake.

Her mother also eating the treat,
But a larger helping for a larger woman.
She had always been large,
But in my mind that meant more room
For love and passion and aspiration.

"Keep that up and you'll end up like your mother."

I did grow over time,
As most children do.
My pounds piled on
And my skin stretched to make room for the garden growing inside of me.
My body grew larger.
But so did my honesty, my beauty and love for the world.

Maybe I did keep up eating cake,
And maybe I did grow in size,
But to say that 'I'm just like my mother',
Is the best complement I could receive.

There's a boy I know.
He is sweet and kind,
passive yet assertive.
He is beautiful.

This boy and I are friends.
We speak from time to time.
His smile melts my insides &
his eyes make my bones turn inside out.

This isn't a perfect boy.
He is chubby and short.
He loves video games and movies with a passion.
A real nerd.

He's a sun.
Not the sun,
A sun.
He keeps me warm and safe.
He scares me but I know he's helping.

This boy is so beautiful.

I am not beautiful.

I am twisted and selfish and ugly and rotten.
I am too cold to be around the sun.
I will dim his glow & cast shadows on his light.

My solution:
Let the boy be the sun,
Let me the moon,
And maybe one day,
We will cross paths again.

I am free
and joyous
and grateful
and kind
but I am not creating.
I cannot.

My eyes glued shut.
My lips sewed together.
My hands chopped off.
My body closed by the same monsters that slit my wrists and changed my name.

The storm has passed but the damage has not.
The demons won't release their claws around my throat nor the teeth that sink into my chest.

Ideas and images run at uncharted speeds,
racing and buzzing past every corner of my mind.
Where do I put them?
Where do they go?

I'm trying to find her again:
the girl who painted fairies & danced without socks & wrote stories about ghosts and mermaids.

Those pixies, bare feet and adventures are still floating.
Waiting to be spilled out onto a page, a canvas, a body; any surface worth noticing.  

The thoughts have been patient and kind for too long.
I fear they won't wait any longer.
They urge and itch to be set free, but without any luck, they melt.

They boil and drip into what can only be described as gone.  
I fear that once gone; they will forever be lost.

I am not inventing, I am not expressing.
I am simply wasting, hoping someone else might construct things for me.
I am not creating.