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They cover my arms
And my legs.
They cover my head
And back.
They're all over
My face.
They tell the story of
Who I was,
Of who I am,
And who I will be.
My tattoos tell my
Life story.
With every movement of
The pen,
Comes pain as the needle
Goes deeper into me.
Slowly though, with time,
The pain subsides and
I'm left with reminders
Of every aspect of my life:
The good and bad,
The painful experiences,
The joy and happiness.
There are mistakes
Because my life is
Not perfect.
There are scars
Because I fell more
Than I've stood up.
There are new ones
Covering older ones
Because over time,
I've learned to
Live in the now and
Forget the past.
With every tattoo I get,
I'm reminded of
What I've done:
The mistakes,
The right decisions,
The failures,
And successes.
There are more mistakes
Than perfect tattoos
Because my life isn't
Perfect.
It's perfectly
Imperfect.
With every stroke of
The pen
Comes pain, happiness,
Some regret.
But I won't
Stop getting them
Because my tattoos tell
My life story.
I have so much more
To tell because
My life isn't over yet.
It began when I skipped lunch
When snacks became meals
And food became calories
I stopped standing and began to kneel
It started with pictures on blogs
Collar bones, thigh gap, dead eyes
Worshiping goddesses who never eat
Whose smoke curls as easy as their lies

It was about being weightless
Being skinny, being happy
To wither and fold into myself
"Somebody please look at me!"
Now my eyes are heavy
I have to hug the wall to get anywhere
Colorful bruises bloom on my legs
The room's spinning, black spots everywhere

I'm like Atlas, holding up my world
With shaky hands, bloods spattering everywhere
Step by step I keep moving, it's never enough
I'm killing myself over what size clothes I wear
Two years ago I wanted this
Asking Google a list of excuses not to eat
Now I think I'm dying, looking up heart arrhythmias
Because I can't follow a single beat
I feel like I'm ******* dying.
I swear on my grave
That this will be the last time
I write a poem about you

I swear that this
Will be my final release
Me letting your memory go
Let some other girl spend nights thinking about you

I swear to myself
That this stream on consciousness
Placed on paper will be the last time
I waste words on you

I swear to you that this
Is the end of my feelings
That that pang of sadness
That twist of the knife will go away

I swear to Gods that I don't believe in
That I will use this as an opportunity
To learn to love myself and not
Some boy who will give it all away

I swear to everyone that
I won't look through the poetry
I wrote about you, the words you stole from me
The time I wasted, stringing words together about your smile

I can swear all I like
But here I am, crying at 10:07
Writing yet another poem about you
I swear that I'm a liar
Anorexia was the most attentive
Girlfriend anyone could ask for
And I fell hard for her
I fell for for 500 calories a day,
The sense of control it gave me
Compliments from girls I'd never talked to before
Doctors so pleased that I was finally "healthy"
That feeling,
Of stepping on the scale
And realizing that I took up less space
Than when I'd stepped on the day before
The feeling of water hitting an empty stomach
The hunger pangs
That secretly thrilled me
The thrill of the lies
The ones that became ever so easy
To slip off my tongue
The thrill of a secret love affair with death
I fell for an abuser
I fell...
Literally
Bruises lined my body
From bumping into walls
Because my body was so
Malnourished I couldn't
Walk down a hallway
Fell down a rabbit hole-
Fell down into a world I couldn't escape-
Thigh gaps, thinspiration, tips and tricks to
Hide this wonderland in your head
Walking headfirst into Anorexia was like walking
Into a haunted house
It's fun and exhilarating at first
It's a game, it's harmless
And then you realize that the doors
Are barred and it dawns on you
That ringing the doorbell of death
Was not the best idea
I am a study in skinny does not make you happy
The 5 pounds you wanted to lose
Turns to 10
Turns to 20
Turns to...
I am a study in
Every inch of your body being a warzone
Of standing in front of a mirror
Seeing nothing but a piece of meat
Taking up too much space
I am a study in calculation
I am a study in lying
I am a study in not dead, but not alive
I am a study in starvation
I am a study in falling out of love
Lonely
Is my soul
For it does not see itself
Opaque
Are my eyes
For they can not feel the light
Trembelimg
Is my heart
For it does not know the way
Severed
Is my mind
For it can not meet my soul
I remember seeing you
Not for the first time
Hopefully not the last
But with a “beep beep” you were already gone
Left little more than a cloudy statue
Where you used to be
I turned coughing and wheezing
Around your smoky expression
Only to see a series of foot prints
Not away from
Me
but certainly not towards me
While you've been gone
ALL I've heard from you
is of the numerous other ferocious beasts
you've been
running
from
Well i’m no Wile-E
but seems to me
From the start
There must not have been that strong of a tie
to begin with.
and although I do look it
I’m NOT a coyote
and since we’re here
From the start
you were not that tastiest of prey
in every sense of it
So be off with you
While I practice
Autocannibalism
I woke up in a fettered heat
Salty terror swam down my brow
I dreamt I was a grape
Naturally round, and unblemished
Wind blew through the land expressing its curving calligraphy
The rustle passed through the trees writing me notes
It blew through the grass painting with texture
It hit my little home
A grape vine crew house
I poured my contents to you
Receiving my umbilical unnecessary return
We were brothers born on the same vine
I awoke to a desert heat causing our connection to break
The further we BOTH fell
The further the beads of sweat slid down my cheek.
This is the way
It
Is
It is
a day dream
As I hit the ground rolling away.
It is
a lack of connection in the first place.
A "crew house" is like a hostel for people who work on boats
and THE grape vine is a crew house here in Antibes, France
I have slept in my bed 800 times
799 times I have slept in between sheets alone, without you
And yet that 735th night
Is what haunts me on night 801
Without you.
I need to get a new bed
And new sheets
And new skin
That you have not touched me in.
The odds of being struck by lightning
Are one in 3,000
I watched from a window
As 13 people that were not me
Got struck by it
Just a few feet away
From where I was standing
And I am left thinking
About how that could have so easily
Been me
Out of curiosity
I looked up odds in a lifetime
I wanted to know
How often things happen
What came up
Consisted only of odds of dying
And I laughed
Thinking
About all of the other odds
That were more important than death
That were more interesting
Than freak accidents
And demise
How about the odds of meeting someone
With the same exact name
Or the odds
Of loving someone who loves the same stuff
As you do
The odds
Of throwing a perfect game in baseball
Are one in 18,192
The odds of finding your soulmate
Are one in 10,000
And more people are concerned
Of getting bit by a shark than finding love
The chances of that happening
Are one in 11.5 million
Sharks are not the enemy
We are
If you ask me
I would say
I'd much rather focus
On the rare positives
There are good things that happen daily
That happen unexpectedly
It is better to hope for those
Than worry about ones unlikely
You can measure the past
All you want
Give it numbers
And try predict future
But one thing you cannot do
Is measure life.
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