I look at the legs of older men
Aged, with their imperfections
showing more visibly every day.
Clustered veins bulging
like roots from a tree
climbing from under the dirt.

I look at the bodies of women
who have lost their youth
from passing years and cigarette butts.
Their faces sagging and folding over
pressing lines into the skin,
a new flaw every year.

And I'm haunted that one day
my body will be decrepit and tattered
like the rags of a skeleton's suit,
and I wonder who will love me
when I have nothing left to show.

A tangled mass of comfort and sweat pressed against my side,
I watch your eyes play "tag" with the droplets bleeding into the window.
You lay naked and curled into me, but I know you are gone;
off chasing every raindrop you call "it".
I want you to know - you break me.
You strut straight into my room, paying a little trip - falling into my world.
Taking off just before dawn with an arm or leg or major *****, before slinking off to your own world - inside my room.

You helped me dump the body in Lake Michigan
We kicked apart ice glued to the wooden boards on the pier
Before unpacking sandwiches in cellophane and styrofoam wrapped cigarettes
And the ***** bloodstained tarp in my trunk
Bitten by moths and stained with the smell of regret and rot
You grabbed the head and I grabbed the legs
We balanced out picnic on the stomach
Walking carefully down the small wooden road into the water
One two and three we threw the body into the lake
It floated but we made sure to stuff it with rocks the size of your fist
With gold and gray gravel in the small spaces in the mouth where the other rocks were too big to fit
The body sank and we ate our sandwiches under the street lamps where we sang songs and kissed the surface of the lake with our toes
You helped me dump that body
And we haven't mentioned it since
You helped me dump that body
And we haven't gone back to the lake since
You helped me dump that body
And it took a few months
To realize you threw mine in the lake too

The aspect,
that shows our beauty, discipline, self-esteem, and that we
get up and move around.
The aspect,
that shows we fight
our desires and go back to our graces.
The aspect,
where our muscle holds our strength and our thin waist shows
our beauty.
It is exposed all around as we put our hands on our
torso and feel our ribs and abs that are perfect to others.
The aspect,
that gets easily ruined as
we let go of our happiness.
It has been taken away.
We become depressed and food is our only angel.
The aspect,
that rounds and widens
as time changes,
routines sail away.
We jump back into the water
and the circles are wider than ever.
The aspect,
that no longer makes us a size two.
We look in the mirror,
we stand, stare at our reflection, and cry.
We say to our body,
*******.
We know the reason why,
but we can't bear the truth to take the blame.
Remember how it is what is on the inside that is cared for,
so we feel no shame.
The aspect,
that shall never define,
our self-esteem, our confidence, our discipline, and beauty.
The aspect,
that makes us insecure,
when we look around the agora,
we feel as if we are the biggest.
It is all in our heads,
our bodies are all different.
We take care of it,
though it is not the sum,
to our greatness,
and wisdom,
and love.

How long will you
leave that body
on the screen?

the gasp of lungs, the veins are wrung

how many numb
limbs flung
must be seen?

Very much experience exists
in this impending summer season
The intangible vantage points
of ease and warmth
haunt this seemingly ever static perception
of bare trees
and bittersweet sights through snow

Accepted is this inevitability
without the cool head
with which that heat was and will be
By now I've surrounded myself
with those who are closer to I
than I am to them
This happens in intervals
and I am still ignorant
to which fate is worse

Lonely cryptic unforgettable actuality
the shore
or
the sea
this busy concerned reality
that governs current coping

Why do girls lie to themselves and tell themselves,
I'm a six
when they're really an eight?
Why do we inaccurately portray ourselves
and seek to obtain these impossible standards
and gaze at our thighs for hours wondering
why did I ever let this happen to me
or noone will ever love me if I look like this
we'll hunch over our stomach rolls and wish
we could slice them off with a blade and they'd heal back flat, all the fat gone;
we'll wonder how anyone could find us pretty
and we'll doubt if they do
because the only boys who have ever been nice to us
are either playing a cruel joke
or are our fathers.
But here's some news: who you are is not defined by your poundage or the amount of lipids stored under your chin,
when you sit down, how far your thighs push out;
or even that terrible bit of fat under your arms
when you wave bye to your gorgeously thin friends.
Who you are is not merely 'pretty'
or 'skinny'
and I desperately don't want you judging yourself
on what some boy's favorite part of your body is
or what passerby think of your ***-
your body is more than skin deep,
your body is more than fat,
you have muscles and organs and things too,
there are more important things, like how
strong your heart is or how many gasps your lungs have had-
those things make you a valuable, important human being
because fat- well- that's not what makes you who you are.
And that's not what I love you for, because darling,
my favorite part of your body is your mind.

Is it such a shameless sin
To fall in love with who you are within?
No one ever speaks of how beautiful they can be
If they didn't put an entire focus and energy
On artificial eye pleasers
To tease the mind
To define beauty
With a worthless dime & an impossible size
If you keep depending on everyone else to tell you you're lovely
For who will you perform when crowd leaves?

You count the calories
Instead of the stars
For the world to see
Another beautiful body.
To run the long mile
So your thighs don't touch
Will who you really are ever be enough?
You've wandered down a street
Where the washed up women are all so cheap
For red lipstick you are a thief
Who will you be
When the audience retreats?

Once the whole world disappears
Into meadows of flowering fields
And numbers are but an illusion so far
All you'll have left to count on are those ******* stars.

the curves formed on paper
a page full of naked women bodies
raw and beautiful
from the mind of my man
drawn before I knew him
the emotion was hard to grasp
jealous or impressed
and then I remember
I used to draw them too
staring at the contours
amplified ****** features
brings me memories
of mermaids and fairies
the female form capturing and entrancing myself
at one point I stopped
not understanding why to draw the masculine was not fulfilling
was I a lesbien
perhaps intimidated by the male form which I knew nothing about
or intrigued with the unfamiliar new features of my own body
my recent awareness of my sexuality
when I got older
I threw out all the drawings