I’m so tired of hating my body
So tired of seeing girls who are big and beautiful
and not seeing the same when I look in the mirror
I’m screaming all day
love your body!
love your rolls!
love your fat!
I don’t love my own body
I don’t love my own rolls
I want anyone’s fat but mine
I see bodies not unlike my own and scream YES! BEAUTIFUL!
How gorgeous every creature god created is
and I look at myself and think, except for that one
Except for me
I go to the museum and stand in front of beautiful paintings
of women with stomachs that roll on and on
and thighs big and strong and graceful
and I think how much I love bodies
All bodies
Perfect because they keep you alive
My body works so hard to keep me alive
and I do everything I can so it fails
I poison my lungs with smoke
I binge and I purge
I cut it open, scratch it, pull at it, examine, pluck, poke, and **** at my body in scrutiny
But turn around and see a girl whose figure is similar to mine
and think wow, she’s amazing
I think no one will desire my body
I think I don’t even desire my body
I think ******* to the blood that comes out of my wrist
Think stop keeping me alive
Think I don’t want to be alive as this
Think no one will love me with rolls and stretch marks and fat
Think I will never be more than that
Think will I ever let myself be more than that?
I think you’re beautiful
I think you’re desirable at least I desire you
I wonder do you desire me?
Do you still want to **** me when you notice my cellulite?
Do you love my stretch marks?
Or how much I chafe
When my face falls because the pants don’t button
The top is too tight, can’t get it over my *****
When you can see my rolls and I’m not even sitting down
When my back fat hangs over the straps of my top
Do you still love me?
Even though my body is undesirable
Can your heart stop your eyes from focusing on my fat?
From roaming over my body counting every lump, curve, roll that’s not supposed to be there
I wonder do you love me with the lights off?
I wonder do you love with them on?

After we broke up I decided
I am a shell
Not the kind you can pick up
And hear the song of waves
Crashing down on shores
Right in your eardrums
But the kind of shell that is nothing.
The kind that sits and breaks and makes no sound
The kind that fills itself with other things and still never quite feels whole
I am a shell who silently lets people hide in me
Who lets myself become a home for the abused
I never make a sound
I only wear down and crumble
I body for the weak and troubled
I love and grow attached and make no sound
When I remember I am just a shell, I let you leave
I let you leave and I even pushed you out
Even with you hiding in me I was empty
When we broke up I realized I was always this empty
You hear no oceans in me
No waves sound off inside of me
I have always been this
I have always been this quiet
This unimportant, this passive, this tired
I am a doorway to better things than me
To shells that sound
To waves that crash
To oceans vast and wide and full
That's okay
I'm glad that you will be able to hear the sounds next time
I'm sorry I never made any

If roses grew too tall for soil unwatered,
And your buds bloomed far above the clouds
I let my leaves crinkle
And hope that one day soon
I may sprout a bit higher,
But never quite high enough to meet you.

Maybe I’ll even get a drop of water
Falling from your ivy leaves
Or a glimpse of the sun
Peeked between your petals.
Casting a red glow upon my own
Dull stem.

If roses grew too tall for soil unwatered,
And your buds bloomed far above the clouds,
I bask in your vibrant shadow,
And consider it an honor
To grow alongside you.

Here I draw semi colons on my wrist
Over scars that once were bleeding
To show I could have died,
But kept living despite my wishes,
And despite my best efforts.

Here I listen to people laugh
I tell them I’m scared of the pope,
Eating, the rapture, opening doors, and the apocalypse.
I don’t think my anxiety is funny.
Did I miss the joke,
Or is my life the punch line?

Here I fit into a mold of an artist.
While I laugh at the irony.
And I create my own mold of a person
With mental illness and poor drawing skills.

Here it all goes.
Life and love and my anxiety.
Seamlessly blurring around the lines on my wrist,
The lines of her body,
And the lines on this paper.

Here I am.
And here
I think I’ll stay.
Despite my wishes.

People say the truth is hard to swallow,
But I just took a whole bottle of pills.
I cut the tension on my wrists,
Split the seams of my skin,
Crossed the lines of my scars,
And I'm drawing the line
At this last line of red.

My wrist is spewing profanities.
My mind is a prison, they say.
But my mind doesn't stop at the prison gates
It wonders in every direction.
And I've lost control.

I find it in my razor.
At the bottom of a bottle of pills
I swallowed my control,
And I found true things.

This is the rapture.
Someone is behind you.
You're wrong and everyone knows.
Don't turn the light out.
That man has a gun.
They are looking at you.
****** Mary
****** Mary
******

No,
I took the pills.

I see her and I feel love in my gut.
Cutting into me, but only the feeling
Of cutting into me
I need proof of this pain.
My arms a clean slate with faint lines
I start by tracing those scars,
Remembering each reason.
Most a prayer to a god I don’t even know.
A god I never talked too much,
But now in my desperation
I’m suddenly calling to “Him” for answers.

Please God,
I search for help.
I look for the answers in my veins
Watching the blood bubble on my wrist.
I’m crazy.
To be gay is wrong,
They say, it’s a sin.
God, I’m begging you.
You made me this way with no mistake.
****** to Hell by your word
And now you’re silent.

I’m not finding answers in my wrist.
These lines of red don’t make sense to me.
I can’t read this message if you’re sending one to me.
I’m crazy.
Please God try to forgive me.
Show me a miracle or give me a sign.
Leave me with faith in you and an answer
To this madness it’s all starting to blur.
But that’s probably just the panic setting in.

Then I think of her.
The way her hair falls in fountains around her shoulders.
Her thick lips and big eyes the size of moons in the sky.
The lisp I can only hear when I see her speak.
And I see the blood dry in lines on my arm.
And I see the proof of the pain of my love for her.

But where’s God?
I prayed, I did what they say to do.
Cried and begged forgiveness time and time again,
And I still love her.

I guess I can’t change.
But it hurts when you can’t even be honest with your mother.
When you’re brother tells you that you’re going to Hell,
And you see the look in his eye and you can tell,
He means it and it makes him sad.

But I can’t help that
When I see her I feel love in my gut
Cutting into me, but only the feeling
Of cutting into me.
Only this time I don’t need proof of this pain.
Because this time there’s already
Blood dripping from my wrists,
And pain dripping from my lips.
And love every time we kiss,
And I hold faith in my fists.

The words that never make it out of my mouth
They stop at my lips
My tongue already formed to make the first letter
Dripping with the same confession
I find too hard to tell anyone

I can feel the words heavy in my mouth
Wanting to be spit out
Shouted loud and proud
But I mumble at best.

To that woman at the grocery
No my boyfriend isn't lucky
But my girlfriend is.