My body is my
only canvas,
but my tools lack the
love and bristles of a
painter's brush.
I am a
masterpiece, an
abstract of scars and
freckled skin.
I draw lines of
blood along my
arms, carve words
into my thighs.
I tell a story in
broken lines
because my voice and
hands waiver.
The picture I paint isn't
pretty;
it's coated in
tears and
shedded make-up,
veins forever
pumping blood down
my cheeks.
But the tale it
tells is
beyond skin deep,
down to heart and
lungs and
moving limbs,
the way we
walk and the
way we sing,
how we love and
are loved,
despite titles and
the color of
our skin,
the meals we've
skipped or
how many times we've
made ourselves bleed.
You may take the
knife to your
wrist, or pour the
bleach down your
throat, but
you
are no less beautiful than the
models on TV who
bear their bones and
cover up the imperfections,
the girls at lunch who
eat whatever they
want and still are as
thin as the
toothpicks that hold their
sandwiches together,
the bigger kids who
learned to accept their
bodies before you could ever
accept yours,
or the face in the
mirror you've failed to
associate with the
one looking back.