wonder came to my name like fairy dust
like sparkle
like the reflection of christmas lights shining through my grandmother's hospital window
she said i was an angel
it didn't change that she was a sinner
sadness has not left me since
like deep confusion
like taking other people's drugs and still waking up
like the boy that wanted every thing i had
he said my eyes were galaxies
he could never completely figure me out
dark rings around my eyes like jupiter and
smoke rings around my head because she was right
this is my halo
with eyes like galaxies and mouth like tinsel
with hair like sun rays and heart like falling
with a mind that has gotten me far
bruises on my body like kisses and
scars on my legs because he was right
this is my galaxy
with eyes like oblivion and mouth like wisdom
with hair like comfort and being like extraterrestrial
with a mind has gotten me far

Pretty is a six-letter word that can’t encompass your entire being in its arms. You were born to a mother who wore pain like trees wear their rings, as marks of fierce bravery and battle cries. You almost split her insides open coming out, wailing so hard the plaster cracked, but she grinned and bore it like a champion, even though the walls of her womb felt like one giant cigarette burn that no one cared enough to put out.

You are Icarus incarnate, with a body stitched from wings, flying toward the sun every day no matter how low the storm clouds hover. Pretty is not a synonym for learning how to put together a body that fights itself every day with pocket knives, like assembling letters to form words that flame in the mouth. That’s called survival. Pretty is an ugly word. It leaves behind a bitter residue that apologies cannot erase. Pretty is just an excuse for playing darts with a woman’s confidence.

When told you are not pretty, always remember how your body expanded to fit its widening cage, its blooming hips, how the growing pains were less like pain and more like cracking fault lines. How your body turned itself inside out and spilled over and over again. Getting emptied is not pretty. It is dark and wounding and it requires strength enough to move mountains.

On your worst days do not look in the mirror and call yourself pretty. Call yourself trying, call yourself surviving, call yourself learning how to get through a day, a week, a month or year. Call yourself still learning. Pretty is just six letters for lipstick, false eyelashes, combs for hair that never gets tangled, not for women who earn a victory every day just managing to exist.

When told you are not pretty, do not **** in your stomach. Pretty is a discriminatory word, but having a body that knows what it wants and gets what it wants is not a hate crime. It’s a healing hymn.

Don’t forget how trees shake their last leaves in winter like they’re shedding skin from the old year. Shed pretty. Shed it now. Teach yourself to replace it with heart-wrenching, brilliant, clever, artistic, unique, understanding, fighting. Always living.

When told you are not pretty, don’t fall in love with the ground. Get back up. This is not an apocalypse; this is not the end of the world. A six-letter word doesn’t have the power to burn down every building in site or freeze the entire world in epic proportions. Your body is not wreckage or refuse left over from a world on fire. Your body is just fine.

Look in the mirror. Tell yourself, Pretty is not me. Pretty is an ugly concept. I am more.

i am so much more than they told me i was

Yes, I am.

more than the haters
more than the lovers
i am more than a queen of beauty
i am your unobtainable
i am your ruined dream
i am a deity far out of reach

and you do not deserve me

you were never just flesh and bones to me.
you were snaggle toothed pumpkins on halloween and socks at the foot of my bed.
and it used to be hard to unlearn you but now your secrets are unraveling and leaving me threadbare.
and i never knew the way my lips were shaped when they weren't crying out your name but now my cupid's bow sits high and i cant even remember how many syllables your lips have anymore.
and i found it funny then, how the hurricane hit on the anniversary of you leaving, but then again i figured it was just your soul trying to claw it's way back to me.
but shutters were made for a reason, and you never did know the difference between "enough", and "not nearly enough".
sometimes i get flashbacks of the way i made you laugh but then i make myself laugh harder and realize that even though you left,
left when all i had was you,
i am still ivy on a tin roof, stardust in a bottle and you,
you are flesh and bone.

She wanted it to be different. She wanted to place the pieces of the puzzle together in a way that was not intended to fit, a way that would make people question if their puzzle was put together the way it was supposed to be, the way they were told it should be. She wanted to stand out from the norms that were set in front of her.

She wanted it to be different. She wanted to make hands tremble as she stood tall with radiating power. She wanted people to read her words and wonder why they ever thought things were okay to begin with, why people thought it mattered if someone was something other than what they believed they were to be. She wanted to be someone people would remember.

She said she was trying to find herself in words she could not mutter, words that drown her soul. She said “I can fix this” as she tried to erase the words she never wanted to have meaning, never wanted to make her feel like the world was pulling her at the seams. She wore her pink eraser down to a nub trying to dispose of pen ink that exposed what she thought of as “different.”

She said she found herself in the mistakes she made, in the words she never intended to write. She said her stories were supposed to be for other people to learn about themselves and instead made her learn that she is not what she thought she was. She said she hurt herself with stanzas that reminded her that her mind was not a fortress, that her thoughts were darker than she could ever imagine.

She controlled herself with the lines that she poured onto paper. She controlled every want, every thought, every action that could do harm to herself and others. She learned how to be kind and considerate. She learned how to love the parts of herself that she never knew existed.

She controlled her existence with the words she wrote, and with that control she learned how to exist.

When weakness is synonymous with triumph
and your heart bleeds red into a pen filling empty spaces with words that only spell truth,
know that this love is not going to be easy.
There is nothing small about this love.
No,
it commands attention, demands candour
It takes up all of your time,
yearns for all of your secrets
Bares its teeth in the face of your fears.
This mosaic love is needy,
and it will not rest until it knows every blackened corner of you,
every crack, every seam, every stitch
Let it in.
Let it light the way.
Let this love do its work, I promise you won't regret it.