Is it really possible for one
person to contain that much joy?
Her smile is one that always
reaches and fills her eyes with warmth
as only true happiness can.
This is such a contrast to
my own eyes that reflect
as much emotion as those of a dead fish.
It's no wonder that most people
either fear or hate me, thinking
that the lack of emotion in my eyes
means that I do not like them.
"No!" I want to shout at them,
"I am not as cold or empty as you think I am."
I simply do not understand how to
show any other emotion besides
sadness through my eyes.
Thus I choose for them to remain vacant.
But her eyes contain every emotion I
have ever heard of
and some I know not the names of.
If eyes truly are the windows to the soul,
then she has the most beautiful soul
I have ever seen.

He is so beautiful.
I don’t understand how he could turn that perfect face towards me
and see beauty.
He tells me how gorgeous he thinks I am.
I don’t know how to believe him.
When I look at myself all I see
are the craters in my face left by the misfortune of puberty,
those few too many chips and cookies attached to my stomach and thighs,
the hair that never seems to stop growing all over my body,
and my ****** features that aren’t proportional to each other.
But he doesn’t see any of that.
He sees the story behind my scars and the strength it took to move forward.
He wants to know the story behind every pound on my body.
He says he loves to play with my long, hazel hair.
He kisses every part of my face when I say I hate it.
Every time he tells me how beautiful I am,
I want to believe him.
I just don’t know how.
When he kisses me, I hold my breath.
When he touches me, I watch the emotions flicker across his face.
When he says he loves me, I brace myself for impact.
I wait for him to leave like all the others before.
They always leave.
He says he never will,
but they always do and I know he will too.
He hasn’t yet, and these are the moments I live for.
The moments when he and I lie here just staring at the ceiling,
just talking about everything and nothing with the same words.
He is my entire world, but I fear he may just be nothing more than
a shooting star, entering and falling out of my life in mere seconds.

Why am I so sad all the time?
It creeps up on me at the strangest times.
I could be just sitting in bed,
and then two minutes later I’m posed with the razor at my wrist.
It comes on me like a creature in the night;
I never see it approach, but as soon as I feel it,
I think “How could it have been anything else?”
I never know why it happens when it does,
I only ever know when I’m in the middle of the storm.
Except the storm is only raging in my head.
It’s so hard to ask for a life preserver when no one can see you’re drowning.
I try so hard to be a normal one.
Somehow, it always shines through the cracks,
then everyone gets to see the madness within me.
They all say I need help,
but I need them to hear that the voices screaming in my head are their own.
I don’t think any of them truly understand
what it’s like having voices yell the most heinous things at me all day.
But the worst part isn’t what the voices say,
those are my own words anyway,
no the worst part it that the voices are those of my should-be champions;
my best friends, my sisters, my brother, my father, and my mother.
Their imaginary words cut deeper than the blades
because I always wonder if these are the things they think about me in their own heads.
Do they think that I’m as fat as they tell me in my head?
Do they see every flaw in my face as I do?
Do they really disregard me as useless as I know I am?
Do they want me dead like I do?

She cried for attention
She cried each night for all the attention that she knew she would never get
Each night as she lay in bed the hot, heavy tears would begin to fall
She could hear them talking in the hallway
She knew each night before it started what her parents would talk about
Each night as she lay in bed her parents would talk about her sisters
She just wanted for one night not to hear how perfect her oldest sister was
She wanted just one night to go without hearing how insane her other sister was
Each night she wished and waited in vain for her name to enter the conversation
She never heard it
She never heard her parents talk about her grades, her lack of friends, or her spiraling depression
Each night she wondered when she would tell her parents how big of a mess her life really was
She knew that she probably never would
She understood that her responsibility was to put on a happy face and sit in the corner
Each night she dreamt of a person who would grasp her hand and pull her out of her small space
She loved the idea of it
She grew infatuated with the idea of nothingness
Each night as the house grew steadily quieter, until the floorboards creaked as her other sister snuck out, she contemplated the insignificance of her life
She began to think how she would do it
She started to plan out the different ways she could die
Each night it started with accidental deaths then moved progressively until she was left staring at the dark cloak of suicide
She wondered what her family would do
She was curious who would really miss her when she was no longer there to not be noticed
One night she put her plans into action
They never even noticed until the next day
They cried each night for all the attention that she had never received