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  Aug 2015 June
Dhaye Margaux
We are two travelers on the same road
You are walking ahead of me
But I can see you there
I want to follow you
I hope you stop for a while
Look back and see me
And wait for me
So we can walk together
Walking with someone makes the journey comfortable.
  Aug 2015 June
Sky
I want to live
and
I want to die.

I want to scream
and
I want to cry.

I want to bleed
and
I want to heal.

I want to be numb
and
I want to feel.
  Aug 2015 June
BB Tyler
fresh threshed of habit
pragmatic in a gasp
cast black magic
trashed
to the last
time waking up

far flung
thrown
but there is no away

the grain
planted to be these moments
stays Earthed
even after greening

in teeming
hill after hill of
step measured progression
these green beings
long before we set out
had daily met the sun
with praise

let us do the same
  Aug 2015 June
Toby Sebastian
I see
and I love,
yet the two dance so tightly
that there is only one.
  Aug 2015 June
C S
I see the soft, charming ringlets bounce up, down, and around
As my little cousin opens her gift.
I hear the tinkling sound of her excited voice,
but feel sick to my stomach when she tells Mommy and Daddy what it is.
She squeals "Barbie!"
And I want to scoop her up and run,
Far, far, away from the little plastic doll,
On, on, onward toward a safe view of beauty.

Her ignorance is bliss, but I know better,
And I pray with a heavy heart
For that beautiful, creative mind underneath the ringlets.
I desperately ask some higher power
How we can protect her from that little doll.
What were you thinking,
I want to yell at the grown ups.
Didn't you learn from us?

Don't you know that Barbie cut open our hearts and sewed in her plastic ideal
Before they had beaten long enough for us to walk?
That she shoved sharp words in our head
Before we could string together full sentences?
That we never stood a chance,
From the moment we tore open the shiny paper
Dotted with cartoon Christmas trees?
That the "must-have" gift for a little girl
Would enslave our bodies and minds to a "must-have" torture for the rest of our lives,
And teach our brothers and classmates to look for the woman
With not enough calories in her body to sustain a simple memory,
With not enough room in her waist to hold a kidney?

Maybe it's not all your fault, you grown-ups.
Maybe you've been chained to the unattainable images for so long
That you've forgotten the shackles were even there.
But does that not scare you?
Maybe you'll remember the strain
When you see a beautiful young woman's scars,
When you hear a breaking voice speak about her friend's final breaths
At her own fragile hands filled with little pills.

But most of all, I pray to God that you won't have to remember too late,
I hope you don't have to remember when you're chained to her hospital bed
Because the insufficiency you gifted her in a shiny plastic box
Started a cycle of sinister self-hate and destructive delusion
That she cannot outrun.
I won't let you forget, because you cannot remember that way.
I won't let you forget, because she can't end up that way, like we did.
You think you gave her a pretty little toy in a shiny little package.
Didn't you learn from us?
You gave her Pandora's box.

You look at me funny,
When I replace the impossibly-sized plastic "woman" in her hands
With a toddler-sized plastic piano.
You may not remember, but I always will,
And I will dedicate my life to making sure
These beautiful ringlets will never have to.
for Sophia

— The End —