i am a creature of inconvenient lumps and angles trying to fit into the suit i thought i would wear when i was young enough to think thoughts like that.

but the suit doesn’t fit and if i try
if i try to force it on

if i pull it over my head squeeze it over the swelling of my thighs and sharp joints of elbows and the jutting points where the bones of my wrist perch like islands beneath my skin
if i let it smooth the bumps and soften the the angles into something more palatable to the eye
will i ever take it off again?

or will it be a permanent fixture impaled
on the spikes of my own personality

will they say on my tombstone
“she lived. she
was ugly grey but not so hideous
that you would notice her in a crowd,
or across a chasm.”

is it better to be naked in all my deformity
finding no comfort from the cold but a life more
spectacularly violently lived

i would be depraved they would scorn me ridicule me
pity me my foolishness

(but i would feel every glorious rash of the wind. the cold would snap against my skin and raise small bumps and when i breathed the air would seem sharp and clear and real).

the suit is waiting on the back of my closet door.
i turn over.
the mattress holds no comfort for a body
so marred with crooks and cusps and declines.