liquids take the shape of their container and I am 70% water,
I can only spread into the fishbowl my mind pours me into,
a free bird cannot exist without being let out of its cage and I was told to do everything except fly,
I am a home without walls and without any structure I begin to measure what is not there,
i measure the diameter of the space in my earlobes,
they speak for me when I am silenced by all that is louder than me,
they try to shout over the voices of teachers and coworkers and parents and all those that have as much faith in me as I do,
they tell the world that I can't fathom a future for myself where I would be valued enough to be expected to look respectable

I used to measure the space between my thighs,
that space spoke louder than I did on a stage,
a stomach growl felt more like an applause to me than what an audience would do after I pretended some words on a raised floor,
it was louder than my mothers voice,
when my thighs didn't touch nobody told me I was too much for them,
it was how the world heard me when the words that I needed to express started drifting away like the inches of flesh,
the inches that had taken my entire youth to collect on my bones and protect my skeleton from the cold

I am the spaces where my body used to be.
I am the negative space in the silhouette of who I once was.
and in losing myself I learned that when your own body feels like a foreign object,
it becomes pretty easy to destroy it.