Just get over it
That's what they all say
You have a good life
You aren't depressed, you're just whiny

Oh, that's right
It's in the past
Because the gleaming eyes of a too-old man
Dark rooms out of the family's sight
The way you can't live without those sick memories
It's all in the past, right?

You were a young saint
A little boy with nothing to lose
But his too-big hands and his too-wide smile
Ripped your white angel wings from your back
And pressed your fragile body
Ever harder to the mattress

It's been almost a decade but you don't forget
Like the way America has not forgotten
September 11th
They remember 2500 lost lives
But you're not allowed to mourn your own?

"They" is just another pronoun
But you know exactly who I mean
The bitter faces that turned away from you
Accusations of lies on their tongue
When all you needed was someone to be there

Forget them
You've grown and changed and you are not one of them
They need to get the **** over it
Not you
You're strong
You're unique

You're alive

I've never been religious
But if anything were to convert me
I think it would be you

I've always trusted Mother Nature
To make volcanos and waterfalls
Great Plains and temperate forests
But I'm not sure if she could create
Such perfection as you

An entire galaxy was pulled into your body
Swelling and expanding
New memories are the birth of new stars
Every scrape and bruise creates cosmic wonders

The Caribbean has nothing on your eyes
Swirling fairy pools that I would not mind drowning in
At all
In fact
I think I'm already sinking

Your body was carved by rivers thundering through a canyon
Carving your every edge and curve
A river still running through your veins

You're a perfect constellation of skin and bone
A forest of beauty lit by your flaming heart
I don't know
If nature could create that
So if there is a god
Thank you

The ocean swells were never mocked
For their size or intensity
So maybe inside you is just an ocean
At high tide

Your skin tastes of sea salt
Your eyes the color of tide pools
But when you look at yourself
All you see is pain

Your mind sends messages to the hand with the knife
Wishing that instead of your wrists
You were cutting the fat

I'm a thousand miles away
But I see you as if you were before me
Blue pool eyes and high tide waist
An ocean of warmth to welcome me
With lapping waves and swirling currents

In the mirror you see a murky puddle
No shape or satisfaction
Thunderstorms do nothing to ease your misery
But only swell the pain

But what I see is a blue ocean
Carving love into the sand
When I reach out my hands
The water is warm to touch
I have never seen water
So beautiful

It's not simple
It's rusted nails breaking skin
Lightning flashes in a hurricane
The crack of a body hitting the pavement

It's the pinch of nails in your palms
The tremble of your legs when you think they're watching
The ache in your chest when your binding is too tight
But not tight enough

It's not a stormcloud, it's a typhoon
It's not a discomfort, it's torment
Its the steel beams in your chest snapping under pressure
Your skeleton crumbling so maybe your chest will be flat then

But all those rusted nails and steel beams
Heated by the fire and fury of passion
Remold into something new

Someone who can stand a bit straighter
Speak louder
Tip their chin up
And show the world who they are
Who he is.

Dysphoria is a skyscraper crumbling to ash
But it's also scraps of wreckage
Reminded into a safe haven
A place of rest
A place of comfort

Angels singing could not have sounded better
Than the first time I said your name to myself
Hopelessly in love and wishing to breathe that name
Against
Your lips

You may hate it, but I’ve never heard a name
I want to say
As much
As yours

It starts as a flutter in my chest
Rushing up my throat and pouring from my mouth
Like fog spilling over
A hill
At dawn

Sugar coated words whispered
Over electronic meetings
The morning birds join me
In my
Song

Audrey
Faith
McKee

White lines on your wrists like lightning scars
The electricity sparking through your veins
Igniting a forest fire on your tongue and infernos in your chest.

You will not submit to them
You are not a controlled flame
There are scars on your wrists and that storm will thunder in your throat

Your blood is on fire and its burning through your skin
You cannot hide in the shadows for you are glowing
Come out and show them who you can be

Extra lessons after school
Explaining how you are not yourself
Such small words used so simply
Cut like knives through your chest
'She'

Paraphrasing arguments
Summarizing discipline
Faceless family with too much on their own plate to understand
Why you don't like what's on yours
'She'

Tightness in your chest not because your binding is too small
But because it isn't
The name of a state has never hurt so much
'She'

You look in the mirror and grimace
Shower so fast you don't have to see yourself
Roll their words in your mind until you're leaning over the toilet
'She'

Humming summer days fade into early autumn nights
Long days enforce what they have already told you
Dress code laws repeated by tongue
And hasty dressing in changing rooms
Hoping they won't notice you
'She'

But you are an active volcano
There are wolves in your chest and lions in your brain
And they can't change you
You get home and look in the mirror and sign into skype
A simple word that only drops one letter
Has never had so much power

He.