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A small needful fact
Is that 98% of women
Do not look like fashion models.
100% of American children
Are being lied to everyday
Told they are not normal
Told there is something wrong with them.
Another needful fact:
More than two million women
More than eight hundred thousand men
Are bulimic
Add, subtract, multiply, divide
Any way you try to solve the problem
It still exists like a parasite.
If any girl, boy, child, man, woman
Wants to escape these images
Running with cupped ears in the other direction
Hoping to save themselves
It follows them, rank with the smell of sewage
It is the ghost in the closet
Television set
Store aisle
Telling them they are not good enough
They cannot escape the lies so dense
Even their inner most breath
Is hot with deception
And so, even the most basic function of breathing
Becomes challenging.
Until we replace poison with water
Brokenness with holiness
Lies with truthfulness
These seemingly sorrowful statistics
Will never quite add up.
A special thanks to Ross Gay for his poem "A Small Needful Fact" and to Megan Falley for using it as a prompt.
 Apr 2015 Flame Robin
Corina
We keep pretending making tea
like children with a playset
we keep pretending we are real
enough to drink and taste

We keep pretending we're in touch
like we have a real connection
we keep pretending we're not strangers
and we never even met
My life was black and white
A colorless canvas that stood barren
Color was never essential
It was never a necessity of mine.

Yet somehow in my own dull perception
A dot had formed right in the center
A bright dot to say the least...

A peculiar thing I had never seen before
It grew slowly, little by little
A storm of color emerged with each inch
Brown, Yellow, Blue, Purple...
So many different colors

My canvas was no longer colorless
In fact it was the complete opposite.
It was not plain and it was not normal
It was now a work of art.

People gawked at its odd style
Praised it for its unusual strokes
A bizarre spectacle to most
And a quite unexpected transformation for me...

"Who painted this strange piece?"
Before I knew it people were staring at me.
Puzzling eyes that clapped in my direction

"Congratulations on your success"
Words that made me realize I was the painter
I was the one holding the brush
The "******" who painted my own path
The one who put color into my life

"Sign the painting" They all cheered
But now that I know I'm the painter
My work of art is not finished yet
I have unfinished business in my life

I cannot quit now.
Knowing that I still haven't found the right colors
The right mix of red, green or blue to solve my problems
I cannot call this a masterpiece...

My life is still a canvas
But it's not colorless anymore...
 Apr 2015 Flame Robin
Mr X
I Fear
 Apr 2015 Flame Robin
Mr X
Sometimes I fear that I'll forget how to hate only because I've forgotten how to love...
 Apr 2015 Flame Robin
Kriti Gupta
Changing your name on my phone was one of the hardest things I had to do
So how do you fall out of love?
Please tell me your secret
Because replacing the love with hate is not what you deserve
Nor is it something that I could perform

It's rebuilding and filling the spaces now there
It's haunting and hypnotic

The lack of words spoken
Not about romance
Not about tea
No longer wanting me in the way I knew

We were together
While forever apart
And we were strangers connected by broken hearts

I burned with a fever
While you held your degree
Friendship over love and *** over drugs
Loving you seems more than enough

To write you in colours that don't exist
And memories that are paid to fade
Isn't this just another stage of human decay?
 Apr 2015 Flame Robin
MV Blake
Sometimes,
I can't help but feel
Dumb in a room full of ears.
The mouth moves
And nothing comes out,
Nothing but threadbare breath,
Wasted and worn
From words of small form,
So when the word counts,
No substance comes out.

Sometimes,
I can sit and talk
Without saying a word.
The eyes flit
And fold into slits,
A nod here and there, moves
As if I agree
With their trending theory,
An attempt to conform
With this act I perform.

Sometimes,
I run out of words
To share to the room.
I don't move,
Just stand there forlorn,
A husk of myself, caught
In the act
As I run out facts
That I can recall
To look quite normal.

Sometimes...

Sometimes...

Sometimes,*
Friends are strangers
Who know your name.
For some people, social situations are agonising, tiring events which leaves us drained and isolated.
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