My mom’s always been one to comment,
“Why do you let yourself be humiliated”
In response to my every cry of the rude, rude
words placed against me every day.
And when she’d ask, I’d be silent
without a proper, clean answer –
I know now.

That time I let my friends bind me to a bench once an embarrassing 2022,
use their blood-of-aphrodite cosmetics that stained my face with their factory ambrosia
all for the joke of it. A smudge of lip gloss cherry red (or blood red) on my mouth,
pointing up from the corners of my mouth making a smile (in truth a frown of regret) –
knowing **** well I would never let anyone do that to me
again. A promise I kept when I returned home that very day,
my hair sectioned into three tails that rose above my scalp into
palm trees – my mother worried for me and my future. A promise I broke to maintain
my friendships and social face within the walls of school.

No matter if it was positive or negative, faces crawling up in smiles or snickers among the
hallways, I wanted to be recognized.

My psyche status quo is crumbling like dust in my hands each minute,
powder blush – a cloud of identity has begun to form on my palms.
I feel bad for my mother, for how would she feel knowing that the son
she tamed so well, so masculine, not a hollow husk of vanitas
to be tempered with by the likes
of negative words.

Bona Glue-tainted lashes show their entirety and reveal remnants of humiliation,
how stupid actions now leave their stupid reminder.
They begged me to try them.
Once, twice, thrice – until I said yes to shut them up.
I remember my eyes being forced open like a
greedy man trying to receive the pearl he
swam deep in the ocean for, forcing the clam
to open.

If the clam doesn’t want to open, it doesn’t want to open.
Yet, I let them stain my nacre with their concept of “humor”
and the bullets of their insults instantly concealed by the same words every time:
“It’s just a ‘funny’ joke.”


My body is torn between respecting one another or myself, and I always ask myself:
“What’s there to respect about myself if people don’t like me?”
This toxic belief shaped into a vessel with  arms and legs, two big eyes, brown skin
(Not to be confused with the likes of curry, I’ve received one too many comments)
A face stuck in the yesteryears of people pleasing.

I let them come for my eyes, my skin, my nose, my lips
My cheeks, my teeth, my ears, down to my chin
My neck, my chest, my bony chest, to my skinny arms
that wrap their melanin membrane tightly around my bones, my fingers,
my weak joints, all the way back to my flat stomach, my waist, my hips,
my frail legs that can only carry me so far, my rocky knees, my swollen ankles,
my feet.
Anything to please those who use their tiny lens to gaze at my every part
To humiliate me is the attention I crave.

My body’s a canvas of ridiculement that hundreds have stained with words,
“You're too feminine,” “your ****** to hell for your personality.”
To change my name as I am insulting the many before
who held this torch of fire
To assume I’m gay for the very bits of difference
I hold as compared to the every boy in this ****** building
Their sporty builds, their bodies fit and lean, no bones to be seen
A knack for sports, a charisma unparalleled
Popularity rounds themselves around the same people copy pasted.