When alone
It drifts silently to the dust
When joined
It soars through violent wind gusts

When alone
It is frail, and if pressured, will break
When together
Not one will you easily take

When alone
It is considered extremely light
When connected
They carry an eagle in flight

When alone
A feather is still a unique and beautiful thing
But when united
They transform into a stunning, powerful wing

i don't expect you to come back. in fact, i wish i could find a way out of my own skin. i wish i could leave me. i wish i were a stranger, someone i've seen only in passing, feeling secondhand embarrassment watching my own reactions. stumbling, grabbing onto everyone around me out of desperation for some kind of balance. it's the same way when i'm drunk, but only then does this feeling that i'm suffering somehow lift up off of my chest for a while. but what is it that hurts me. what is it that burdens me. aren't i safe now. my mother tells me depression comes from a lack of faith, as does anxiety. i've been in churches my whole life but the hymns haven't stomped out the fire i feel under me. the sense of danger. my mind is always telling me to run like i'm gonna die if i dare try to defy it. mother Mary sits on a rosary but she doesn't say anything. i sit in sanctuaries and i always cry from an overwhelming sense of gratitude that it could get better, but it never really gets better. so i have only hope that if i just keep calling, i'll eventually hear the answer. i dug myself into a hole when i rebuked you for saying i was cold, but the truth is that i really am. i can be such a harsh woman. when i was six, i would pick at my scabs, and i still open old wounds as if the blood is more attractive than the scar. i am always reaching for something beautiful, only to get handfuls of thorns. i'm still hanging roses up on my walls, something dead yet pleasing. and my books are all filled with pressed flowers but i still have no real use for them. i'm always holding onto empty, dead things, but i inherited a stubbornness that wrings them out into nothingness, waiting for the rain to fall from a cloudless sky. there is nothing for me here.

So, you ask,
How would I explain it?
Well certainly, as something
Not fun.
It's like...
It's like carrying a leach around with you.
When I walk, I can feel it,
It is a dead weight on my chest,
******* the life from my arms,
Making my hands and face slender,
What should be full and strong
It's like...
It's like when you're sick to your stomach.
That feeling of tar in your gut,
But instead of being isolated, it's everywhere
Throughout your body,
It makes you feel sick everywhere.

This is how I explain dysphoria:
Have you ever looked in the mirror,
And wanted to just rip all your hair out?
When a bad hair day gets out of hand,
Have you ever felt the need to just start over?
Even when you tear out a clump of hair
And your scalp looks raw and a little ******,
But you keep going anyway,
Just to get rid of that stupid haircut?
...no?
Alright, how about,
When you're watching the outtakes of a 3-D animated movie,
the scenes that have "gone wrong",
When the girl's eyes are far too big and pop out of her face,
Her arms are disconnected from her chest,
Her head moves but her teeth do not,
And you just want to scream "DELETE IT!"
Because it's obvious that someone has ******* up here,
And this nightmare, this fever dream
Is not what they intended their creation to look like.

Alright, well have you ever
Done a pencil drawing?
And you've put a lot of time and effort into it,
You're so proud,
This is one of your best works,
But something about it is just off?
You might not be able to tell what it is,
This will bother you for a long time,
You will spend hours on end thinking
About what exactly separates this piece of art from everything else,
What it is that keeps it from perfection...
Until suddenly one day, you realise,
You notice exactly what's wrong,
You grab an eraser to fix your mistake
But then, oh no
Your eraser was *****,
And when you tried to rub out that single wonky line,
You leave a huge black smudge across your paper
And now there's no way to get rid of it
All your work on this piece, ruined,
And you're really upset,
You were so proud of this drawing,
It was so close to being perfect,
It could have been so beautiful,
It was almost perfect, but now...

But now, it's wrong.
It just looks wrong
It just IS wrong,
It wasn't meant to look like this
I am trying to explain as simply as I can
That this body is wrong,
That it wasn't meant to look like this,
That it wasn't meant to BE like this!
Don't you understand?
This is how I explain dysphoria:
Have you ever looked in the mirror
And wanted to just rip your chest out?
Do you ever see your body, your parts seeming broken,
Your chest, legs, hear the sound of your voice
And just scream "DELETE IT!"
Because it's obvious that someone
Has ******* up
Someone was using a ***** eraser
When they created me, erased me,
And they've left smudges, mistakes, that I
Cannot get rid of,
And however hard I try to pretend
That I don't care,
I do,
And I still feel the need to erase them.
These leaches that I carry around,
They drain me,
And I was so proud of myself
I,
This body...

It could have been so beautiful

Red in the eyes,
charging towards me.
This life has thrown many an obstacle,
but I always manage to move the cloth,
to attract it in a different direction.

I scave it off with a taunt,
hoping to delay the disaster.
Yet somehow it keeps running,
headlong in my direction,
ready to plow right through me.

You find humor in the darkest things,
But I can tell when you don't want me to see.
We are two little black birds, and you are so much larger than me.
You think your black hole has swallowed you whole,
You can't escape your role, you are part of my soul.

You teach me to keep flying,
Show me where the easiest path may be.
We have fallen to Hell--
Ah, no, actually... We are the Q U E E N S.

You've watched me all these years
And within those years never forgot me.
You've seemed so unchanging,
So strong, yeah, like black tea.
You give me a sturdy branch in which to always land.
You tell me there is nothing impossible,
If you'd be my sister... That'd be grand.

We are two little black birds trying to fly.
Life can be so unfair,
But you've taught me there's no law in the sky.
You fill me with everything I needed in a friend...
But still you know my worries that tell me it will end.
You take me to the top of a highest tree
And tell me candidly that I can just... Be.

Love.

What do you think when you hear that word?
Depends on who says it, right?

Love is the pit we fall in,
Now that might sound bad,
But think about it,
It keeps us protected from the world outside,
Stuck with whoever fell in with us.
There's just one problem...
Sometimes,
The person we fall in with, doesn't let go of the rope.

Love...
So easy to fall in,
But when you're left alone in love,
This tunnel of beauty, passion, ecstasy, and peace...
Becomes your own personal hell.
Built by you,
For you.

Love.
How easily we fall in.
Please,
Someone tell me how to fall out again..

~Robert van Lingen