please tell me, straight-faced,
across from you doesn't sit
a living nightmare.

girl, you look in the mirror
wishing you were skinnier—

that's like telling your favorite rock
you wish it were a meteorite instead.

was going into that small Iceland diner
with only wool socks over black leggings
on my skinny tanned shins
(red Converse, soaked with saltwater,
still drying in the rental car,
sticky licorice jammed between seats).

Don't remember what I ordered,
only remember the way the waitress
smiled at me, in spite of my feet.
I felt so strongly that I was breaking
an unspoken rule—little did I know
how many I'd break in the months to come.

do you remember,
you hadn't seen snow before?
your lips burned with cold.

if i went away,
how long would it be before
you had replaced me?

it's hard to keep still,
i tell her, eyeliner brush
tickling my eyelids.

i think i've stopped
drawing people so much
because how on earth
could i draw anything
as beautiful as he is?

never thought i’d love
you, but, you know, since when were
expectations met?

it was on that day
she started drawing people
for herself again.

i think you hated yourself a little more inside your head
when you had no reassurance you were inside someone else's.
you can laugh with a mouth wide open now without worry.
in class near her, you've found your home away from home.
you love her so ******* much and it's ******* amazing.

when you met my eyes:
stomach crashed into heart,
played ribs like guitar strings
on the way up my chest

This is when I feel in tune with my body,
no longer that feeling of desertedness—
breath slow, tongue in cheek, eyes caught
on the waving branches of the trees
outside my open window, air warm.

"I feel marooned in this body,
Deserted, my organs can go on without me"
—Panic! at the Disco, "Trade Mistakes"

please don't break down
when you see what we looked like today,
my thighs say as i walk home,
rotting petals littering the ground,
but it's not our fault
you chose to wear those shorts.