i will bite my tongue until it splits
and use my blood as rouge

i will lift my chin and **** my stomach in
like a statue in the louvre

i am the scent of honey in july
i am a cloud formation in the sky
i am a quiet girl who won't ask why

i am who i (you) want me to be

my body and i,
we do not always
get along.
our relationship,
like that of an old married couple.
an old married couple who got married a little too young,
too unprepared,
too wild.

a couple that's been together way too long,
so long that, now
we could not be with anyone else.
we don't know how to
and anyway, we have the same friends.

my body and i,
we fight a lot.
years upon years of arguments,
betrayals.
too many feelings have been hurt.
i'm not sure if there is even any trust left,
both equally as guilty as the other.


but there's still love there, somewhere,
deep down
and every now and again that goodness will appear,
hidden within the little things;
leaving meals out for each other,
tucking the other into bed after a long day
warm showers.
small moments of love

we stay together.

sometimes i feel like the hours in my days are measured not in units of time, but in calories, minutes to my next meal, and hunger pangs.

there is a room in my mind
in which the clocks are made of mirrors,
detailing the time that it will take for my rib bones to make waves beneath my fingers,
for the corners of my elbows and my shoulders and my wrists to poke out from inside of my skin.

this is where i curl up to hide,
taking part in a ****** up form of transcendental meditation
in which my only mantra is an endless repetition of the reasons why i should not eat.

'you eat to live, you don't live to eat,' i chant,
running my fingers over my flesh and digging into the too-shallow hollows of my bones.

you look at me with laughter in your eyes and tell me that everybody feels like this, but i refuse to believe that everyone's body feels like a prison made of heavy bones and aching joints.

and if everybody feels like i do then, ****, i don't know what to do, because at least if i tell myself that i am all alone then i can pretend that i may someday be someone else with the bones of a sparrow and a tongue that doesn't try to tie itself into knots when it hasn't had enough to taste.

my voice won't stop creaking and i can't remember what i really sound like anymore,
and when you tell me i seem jumpy i have to pinch at my calves to try and stop my hands from shaking.

how am i supposed to get better at this when the only things that make me want to stay alive are the numbers on the scale and the space between my thighs?

when did the
mirror break?

a different angle
for every mood
sharper lines
and harsher truths

jaggedly cut through the glass
same stripes up my sides
personal lightening storm
down my shoulders and thighs

when did the
mirror break?

when did fat stop
being a feeling
and more of just
a state of being?

I think everyone has been self conscious
When it comes to how we view our body
How could we not, with all of the images
That we see online and on the T.V.?

For me, what helped with my view of my bodice
(Though it might seem quite weird)
Is that I could've been greek goddess
Like the statues in which they appeared

1.When you walk, don't look in the shop windows. There's nothing really to be seen except a disappointment you've been hiding from and a sense of self you're afraid to feel. Sometimes you'll get curious, you know, and that's okay. We all slip up from time to time. Just remember those deviations from the plan will knock you right back to where you were. You will remember then, and you won't slip up again for awhile. Bring music, or have a song stuck in your head. Never let you mind wander.

2. While you're shopping turn around so you don't have to watch yourself change and struggle into the new clothes. Instead, just turn around to reveal your new look. Then, while ******* turn again. Once more, you will slip from time to time and think perhaps the worst is behind you and you can handle this sort of thing now. It's just you after all; the you that you've fed bathed and breathed with for your entirety. There's no secret that lies in your skin you're presently unaware of. But this slip will cause a prolonged stare, a staggered heart beat, and a couple sniffles. You won't deviate for awhile after. Pro tip: just ignore reflective surfaces in general

3. But if you must look in the mirror, use one that only reflects the shoulders up. Sure your face has gross, brown spots and plateaus all over but that's nothing an unmatched Neutrogena foundation can't fix. You'll feel pretty good. Pretty great actually, as long as you don't let anyone touch your face, or hug anyone's white shirt. It'll begin to feel like that's what you actually look like and your confidence will exceed its greatest peak in the past, before you begin to feel you're fooling everyone around you.

4. And then you'll forget all of these things and you'll go to college and you'll believe in love still--for some reason-- even though every single moment in the past 18 years has told you otherwise about its existence, and because you believe in this thing and you love to write and you love to love you'll start to believe someone could love you and this feeling will eat you alive when it never arrives
5. Soon after you'll begin to realize how mundane you are and how much you blend in. You're not that girl that catches someone's eye and they think about it for days at a time
5. You're the girl blocking that girl


6. So you stop wearing makeup because what's the point you know
If you can't get someone to care about you in a heightened, better state it doesn't matter if you look like your worst, natural you
7. So you walk in the rain and listen to mitski and don't care about the fact that your hairs getting wet even though black girls are supposed to care about that sort of thing
8. And you look in the shop window of that café and feel a sense of self you've been trying to avoid
9. And you start the cycle over again

This body and I, we don't get along.
I look back at old pictures, and remember how I felt.
Body turned, chin down, stomach in.
Hoping, in those brief moments between the flash and capture,
that I would be frozen in time as a smaller version of myself.