if i show you
will you understand?

how i've outlined these arms
vein after vein
where sunlight runs
i see only
lines to trace

i got a barcode on my wrists

scan me for the price
of beauty

i am as expensive
as what people think of me.

do you know what it feels like
to attach your worth
to weighing scales
and waists that never
slim down?

is this why they call them
shoulder blades
to cut through
your skin
to be called
"pretty"

thigh gaps that map
the distance between your legs
to make you
matter so much
you can't stand on your own
feet.

when you walk the shoes
we wear
will you know?

the path to be
called beautiful
is full of
self-hate

and we pay for that bill.

I have done things
To myself
So slow and incremental
That it could not be noticed

The path was
Uneventful
Not much drama
Or neurosis

The dulling
Of the faculties
The tightening
Of the lung

The salt
That swells
The eyeballs
When the funeral
Song
Gets
Sung.

Your friends
Won't read your poetry
Foolish to think they would
Unfair too
To expect em to
This aversion
Is understood
For you won't
Get a true reaction
It'll be tempered
With kindness
And tact
But there's
Always one
Who bucks that trend
As a matter of fact.

If paper and pen
understand me to my core,
then it is my voice that betrays me evermore.
I know better, yet opening up
stays my biggest fear.
I am surface-leveled,
neither there, nor here.
And so comfortably, with no fuss,
I stay a projection,
nothing more than dust.
I am your imagination,
no depth,
no width.
I am only but a shell.
An empty figure,
stripped of will and vigor.