My thighs have
Known scars  
They have known how to close in fast like a threatened house when thieves are sitting in my bushes waiting for the door to open so they can fire a gun at my esteem  
And take away all the love I have spent endless years collecting for myself; they have known to close and shrink when they are too much
when it seems like no one wants to come in  
But my thighs have also known courage  
My thighs  
Stretch outward
My imagination
Jiggles when I run after my train of thoughts
I  
Have always been the elephant in the dressing room
My thoughts popping out from the sides of the curtains there
Is nowhere to go.  
I look at myself in mirrors that cannot fit my whole body they reflect only what is  
Seen by the naked eye  
On the outside I am fully dressed up for shame
Inside of me is a Greek figure
I  
do not want to tell my story like this.  
I hear: big is beautiful but so is small but so is "normal" I ask them what is
Normal give me two minds that speak of a same definition when  
Have we never been programmed to give the same answers like regurgitating lessons in biology only speaking compliments that sound like cold hard facts  
You are beautiful you look nice you make me look so bad your figure is so curvy and attractive your legs aren't too fat come on why would you buy this if it does not suit you why don't you go to the gym anymore why don't you talk about your weight loss story  
Why don't you figure out a way to love each other outside of way too much flesh way too much bone way too much of  
This.  
I know,  
I know what I am what I am not what I wish to be what I know I should not wish to be but the idea of changing myself runs in my mind more than I run or I grip at my sides at my scars, more than I skip meals I skip a beat at the thought of you seeing me in my underwear I skip through dieting techniques in magazines
And instead  
I flip to the gardening section {IN THIS ISSUE; YOUR OWN VEGETABLE MINI GARDEN}  
I flip my hair to wash my face in the morning
I flip the middle aged man off catcalling me when
I am walking in the streets I flip coins to choose which book I am reading next  
I flip to the next page in my life; yesterday you are no longer needed
I will rest in my bed tonight
Instead I move to the easel and paint myself;
I paint myself as I am; not negative space.
I fill the easel and by the end I have run out of paint but this is what happens when you try to paint a reality things empty out when you try to correct it every time you look in the mirror your heart does not seem to understand that it has run out of blood by the time it has tried to tell your story in the most sugar coated way it can;  
Heart,  
I do not blame you.  
Sometimes I am lost as well  
But in this unwanted balancing act of love and hate my body feels dizzy my consciousness is begging me: "Pamela, stop" I stopped, I listened.  
As I was running on the treadmill as I ran away from the party because there was food as I run past a sign and don't notice it; it was telling me to stop as well.  
Because in our marathon through life in our rush to get to the other side of our mentality that says: "Welcome! You have achieved body positivity and can now be mentally stable"  
We have forgotten there is always a bridge we must cross, one we always try to shortcut our way around and where we end up falling face-first into the water most;  I believe
In the linear motion of time; I wished I knew how to turn back time though and stop myself from being born into a world where I am labelled the second I am pushed out of my mother's body,  But I believe
In the linear motion of time but also in the linear motion of learning how to love this heavy body of mine.  
In the way that I carry its burden on my back I see that there is always something in the equation of body love I have overlooked, something that makes the mathematics of confidence add up
I see that before the negative numbers go in ascending order they stop at   
Zero.  
Before we can go from body hate to body love I had to make one stop at Zero.  
The words blowing through its empty circle there is a neutral place for you before you carry on, a "no man's land" in the battle against the voices in your head, a safe zone from this battle ground.  
  
Zero comes to me when I am shaking from the rain and tells me: "you've come a long way, baby", tells me I do not need to be this or that, that I can just be, in the utmost simplicity.  Tells me I am what I am and that is fine to be.  

Zero: maybe I do not want to be neutral. Maybe I do not want to be zero on the scale in my space, neutral in my life. But I walked and I saw that zero was light and burdenless.  I walk.
I stop.
I may not be home, but the way there isn’t so bad.

This is a memory of the time I first stepped into a plane,
When I took a seat by the window next to the 80-year old man
And as the world got smaller and bigger the only thing that kept me sane
Was that I was a lonesome traveler without a plan.
And all the while my insides churned and the cocktail washed the bile,
The man came out of the cockpit to tell us we’d almost land
In Cairo airport, and I could feel the stream of the Nile
In my lungs, and the smell of the mango in my taste glands,
I twisted in my seat to have a better look
At the sad earth I’d soon call my own,
But my lips deceived and my head shook
For Egypt’s glory furiously shone.
                                                         *p.t.

Who’s that man in the black coat?
He always gets off the 11 p.m bus
and whenever we’re two *****
brown and ripped seats away
I can distinguish the smell of smoke
in his hair and the rain on his eyeglasses
Every time he sits down two *****
brown ripped seats away from me
the yellow neon lights
stuck on the roof  that he has to avoid
by bending, catch the rings in his beat up
calloused hands
I can see his fingers holding an overflowing moleskin notebook
and I am yet to approach him
about his name
when all that fills my conscious is the question
concerning the stack of papers in his hand.
                                                                               *p.e.n

I spot you from afar,
And I feel a sweet, aching weakness in me.
That is love.
That is all there is to love.
                                           *p.t.

"Here, hold my hand", he said
and he lead me through the darkness
"Where are we going?, I whispered
But I didn't want to know, I must now confess
There seemed to be a great light in his eyes
but he lead me through the darkness
I followed him slowly, with heavy sighs
With the urge to run away from this mess
  
A thousand years passed by
And my hand was still entwined in his
A thousand years had passed by
And I never searched for my own dark bliss
He walked me through caves, he showed me stalagmites
and filthy bats
He showed me murky water and rotting rats
He showed me mossy walls and the rusty ceilings
But I did not see it
I did not see it at all
Because he lead me in a darkness
Only he could understand
He lead me in his darkness
And mine stayed the undiscovered land

I don't mind when it strikes and it hurts
Eighty miles per hour
It won't ache it won't irk

Discover when you've been lied to
And the ones with blood on their hands
Just wipe it on your face and kiss your cheek

I don't mind when it wounds and it shoots
The alcohol tastes so sour
Though it claws at the memory from its roots

And the times spent in your room
Dissolve with the tears from the fumes

Sons of bedeviled thorns and pistols
They take you in
And they swallow you whole
They take a shot
At your chest, at your brain
They take a shot
And they can't really explain

Hotels filled with lonely corpses
A beautiful face seems the only source
That might get you out of your mind
When you are sick and you are lying

Discover that the ones with blood on their hands
Are the only ones who take a stand
With their sins and knives behind their backs
And a smile, and a laugh,
You have to know where you're at

You spell an apology letter by letter
Yet the sky would know better
Than to clear up on a day like today
When it can strike your soul
So fragile and so frail
And your hands
So skinny and so pale
And your smell
So old and so stale
And your heart
I can almost hear it fail

There's no light at the end of that tunnel
There's no mercy for merciless gunner
Maybe next time they'll think ahead
Before their words shoot you dead

But right now I don't mind
If it stabs from behind
Eighty miles per hour
And I still can't race past my mind

And right now don't you mind
Of your hit and run
Are you blind
To the damage done
I hope the sound of the drums
Drowns your cries
Where my soul once lied.
                                             *p.t.

And you know, you never told
Of the time we took the old
Man to watch the sunrise over the lake
For the very last time before his Great Ache
I never heard you talk about
Last year, when we were out
Of town, and we brought
The tents to a dry hill
Overlooking the windmill
And all we did was drink and talk
And you clumsily sang “I Am A Rock”
So, did you ever mention when
We both sneaked into an ***** den
And the Indonesian woman stole you wallet
Right after you’d won that ridiculous bet?
I think you kept the secret memory
When you stormed out the car in fury
When your Beetle broke down on Lucky lane
And all we did before repairing was done
Was kiss and play knock-and-run
And I don’t mind at all
How we make our times together look dull
But what I love is that they won’t know
How our nights and mornings go
How the caresses from the moonlight
Over your face fill me with delight
The hummingbird kisses while we’re still asleep
And your callused fingers that linger and creep
And the love poems made out of moans and sighs
The love cage of our tangled arms and thighs
Along with the Oasis vinyl dying out…
They won’t know what we've been on about.
                                                                           *p.t.