There's a girl that follows me everywhere.
Sometimes she trails behind me like a shadow,
And sometimes she stands in front of me like a distorted reflection
From a mirror that doesn't speak the present tense.
Words don't exist between us,
She just looks at me with blue eyes bordered by long lashes.
Sometimes I drag her through the looking glass
And tell her she's just like me.
But not as smart.
She looks at the mirror and sees wounds, scars, flaws, ugliness,
Where I see learning, growing, beauty.
Life itself is dancing across her skin
To a beat so fast and erratic that it leaves scorches.
I try to tell her that,
But my words are silenced by her attempts to grow wings.
I applaud this display of determination,
But I sit so far back that she fails before the claps reach her ears.
I sit there and watch her, and it's funny, because I have her wings,
But I can't give them to her, she can only grow them.
So I ask life to snap her DNA in a few places, replace them,
Whisper a few words of wisdom into her brain and hope that those seeds take,
Mutate. Grow into the wings she wants,
The wings that'll let her fly to places
She doesn't even know yet that she wants to go.
Child, girl, adolescent, you'll never be a woman.
You won't live long enough, you'll die bleeding,
Ripping out your ****** while shedding skin.
And you know what? You'll love it.