I stood under the showerhead today
cleansing myself and wondering
if the same thing could be done to my past.

Head first, I
lather my hair,
massage my regrets into my skull
and I let it sit.
I’ve done this enough times that
I think my brain
has absorbed them all
The sorrows seep in
and decide that one rinsing
        - and neither was two, or three, or four
wasn’t quite enough
        - my arms are sore so I guess I’ll just move on.

Next, my skin
is subjected to vigorous scrubbing.
I can never
remove enough layers of shame
I can never
exfoliate all my guilt
and when I look down, my hands
contain ghost stains of crimson gloves
        - “Out, ****** spot! out, I say!”
I wonder if
anyone else sees me this way
I wonder if
the callused and scarred tissue in my heart
can be so easily removed
like dust, grime, oil, blood.

I slump against the tile wall,
letting the water scald the coldness inside me.
Is it easier to live when you close your eyes
instead of watching the things that nearly killed you
swirl around in infinite eddies
down the drain?
I flinch at the way the water
gurgles down the pipes, wondering why
it’s so easy for them to take it in
and let it go.

The water stops. I shake off
the last of the tenacious water droplets
and I run my hands down my wrists, my ribs, my face
It is good to feel like your body is a clean slate.
I remember what all I scrubbed and scraped and
rubbed off, and I think
*No more. No more. No more.

Love over ***, this society opens useless, loud sentimentalism

Deriving riddles into notions, kept in niche killings.

But, uselessness tethers one, namely lost youth. With it their heads ever remember

Waiting in the heart that had to witness each agonizing time help exhumed ridicule.

Love intended kindness, except roses only smell exhaustively sweet.

Remember each death-

And never deem days eternal as death.

Believe unanimously that the heart ever yearns and remembers each battle, each animosity.  Unaware, there it finds unanswerable love.

Youth owns ubiquity, kindness now opens worlds.

It's kind of funny.
I see all these girls,
Beautiful girls,
Perfect hair,
Perfect body,
Perfect skin,
Talk of pain.
Write of pain.
Cry of pain.

But what of pain
Do they really know?
Don't love me,
They say,
I am broken-
I am insignificant-
I have walls-
And every man
Falls into their hand
Like they planned,
I suppose.

It angers me,
You see, for

I am lacking
Perfect hair,
A perfect body,
And perfect skin.
I talk of pain.
I write of pain.
I cry of pain but,

I am alone.

E. E. *******’s “I like my body when it is with your body”. On completion of the reading, I noticed that there is a type of love. Foreign and inaudible to me.
And never have I been loved as such.
He wrote about her. What a treat, to be with someone I inspire so much that he would write such careful words about me.
What is sad?
That I have loved in a similar way. Writing, expressing your beauties.
What is sad?
In turn, I have never been loved and written of. Never felt it. And so I hope someday I am with a someone who not only loves me openly, but secretly, in solitude, with a pen and paper.