She wore stilts to seem on top of the world
She wore long sleeves to hide her insecurities
She wore a mask to hide her face
And kept her hair long to hide the line
Where plastic met skin

When she takes it all off she sees someone she knows
And realizes how much she envies her stranger
So she tries to become them again,
But she can’t get escape from the way the mask makes it hard to see,
From the way the stilts stab the soles of her feet
From the way the skintight clothes won’t let her breathe.

She
Can’t
Breathe

So she suffocates to please the people she hates,
Saying things like,
“When I’m skinny enough,
When I’m popular enough,
When I’m good enough,
I’ll stop.”
But she is never good enough for the one person she hates the most.

She hides her paper as she confesses her loathing
So that no one can see her graphite tears.
She wants someone to ask “Are you okay?”
So that she can cry to someone other than the journals she’s been documenting her self-destruction on for months.
But of course,
When someone does ask,
She puts on her mask and says,
“I’m fine.”