The first time I can remember writing a poem was in 3rd grade. We wrote haikus about springtime and when we had 4 we sewed the paper together with pink yarn and gave it to our mothers for valentine's day. The first poem that I read was about friendship.I didn't like it.The first poem that touched me was about suicide. It talked about pretty elfin faces turned up to the light and how when the blood splattered it looked like a rose a bouquet of flowers between her legs she said no he said yes, more. The thing was I thought that pulling a trigger on yourself was beautiful. I had this image of a skinny girl in a white dress leaning over a toilet letting all the bad pour out of her pink lips. thought that carving his name into your stomach fat was meaningful and that scars were a thing to be proud of. I thought that only eating celery and working out until you fainted was cinematic. The reality is that the blood splattered because the bullet cut a dime sized hole in the back of her mouth and came out where her ponytail would have been. The pressure shattered her larynx and lodged pieces of bone, teeth, and cartilage in the surrounding skin. Her tongue was torn to shreds and her metal retainer melted into her gums. There weren't flowers between her legs, there wasn't even a condom. She never said no but she never said yes. They were in love and wanted to be together but she didn't want him. She pretended she enjoyed it and cried in the bathroom when he fell asleep. When you zoom into the picture of the bulimic girl in a white dress you will see that she isn't a teenager she's 40 but she still looks like a child. Starvation prevented her bones from growing. Her lips are chapped and she has sores lining her gums, burst blood vessels in both eyes. Her hair is long but thin and dry and her eyelashes had fallen out and never grown back. She is kneeling over her daughter who offered to pay for rehab's toilet because she ate too much during thanksgiving. She bruises easily and the purple isn't the color of a night sky it is the color of deoxygenated blood vessels popping under her skin and congealing like fat on a turkey. Carving your name into your rolls doesn't make him come back to you, it prevents you from ever wearing a bikini. Stop making self harm and mental disorders seem beautiful and romantic, because there is nothing beautiful about having to bury your only child because he forgot to eat and used the razors one too many times.