iloveyou,
you say, tangling up the three words in one breath.
i love you more, i tell you.
no, iloveyoumore, you say.
i love you more than bees love flowers, i say,
and you tell me that bees love pollen
and that youlovememore.
but i love you,
more than bees love flowers and yes, pollen
and i love you more than birds love to sing
more than wishes love stars
more than dreams love sleep
i love you more
than grass loves rain
and rain loves the earth
and the earth loves trees
and the trees love the wind.
i love you more
than sunflowers love sun,
more than the sun loves the sky,
more than the sky loves blue,
more than blue loves the sea.
i love you
ilove you
iloveyou like youloveme.

Green
Like moss, ripe avocados and my favourite sheets
Brown
Like oak, roasted chestnuts, and tasting chocolate on your tongue
Blue
Like the ocean, your boxers and the sky just after sunset

You sit and admire the flowers so long
That you start to spot the thorns
But you smile and smell them anyway
With hands made to stand firm

You loosen and tug the weeds out
Allowing space for new growth
With seeds you collect and plant
Building my garden
better than I ever could

I collected the parts that people liked
Dug up the roots to see how they grew
And planted them in my own garden
So when you say my garden is beautiful
I say thank you but I know
Because I built it for you

Covering ourselves in night cream, we fight our wrinkles, and buy anything that says anti-aging.
We want our skin to stay frozen.
Frozen in a time when we didn't even appreciate the glow of young skin.
Spent our entire youth hating what we saw in the mirror and doing everything we could to keep it covered.
Under thick masks and dark outlines we tried new products, techniques, designs,
Searching for one that made us feel pretty.
We let - no - we pay doctors to stick long needles into our soft features and change them with chemicals making us less human and more plastic
and that's just our face
our bodies? we do so much worse
Starving ourselves till our heart shrinks in the only thing running through our brains is you are fat, you are fat, you are fat, and who is to blame us when everything we see is telling us to believe that
“I run so I can eat” “I work out because I love food”
These words are printed on shirts that we wear when we should feel powerful but instead send the messages that you don't deserve to eat unless you earn it
Burning every last calorie until we are empty again
We work so ******* fixing our bodies, but maybe that's not what's broken maybe the repair work is needed in our heads and in our hearts tweaking until we can find a connection of love between our bodies and our minds.
The same genuine love you have for your mom, or your dog, or your daughter
Unconditional, Everlasting,
When will we learn to love ourselves?

trauma drifts down through the branches of my family tree
like summer pollen