Beauty

I look my best when I'm nestled between tall blades of grass, with the sunlight splashing freckles across my face like it did when I was 9.

I look best in the eyes I wore at 17, which dwelled in awe of the sky, always thirsting for immensity.

When I smile and feel sunburns tugging at the skin of my cheekbones, I am beautiful.

Since that girl in the mirror began mimicking me,
I have seen her loneliness pressed against the glass.

I adored her. I couldn’t help it.
Maybe they’d let her out
if she dreamed hard enough,
if she got braces, or bangs, or a nose job.

Sunshine bends the sounds of my memories to gold,
and for that, I am grateful.
Eyes linger if you let them.
But I can feel when they forget me
when my body fades into the sheets.

I ask for beauty to accept possession of my eyes. I want to rebuild the world with more colour.

I wish for eyes to coat me in beautiful, I want to be adored.

Spit At Me

I’m too kind so stepping over me, I was practically asking for it.

Perpetually lower than another, forever screaming to be picked, as if that is what would fix me. I am too generous, people don’t want someone to love them so hard, they want a challenge. I am too kind, and it makes them guilty, because imperfection bites the hand that feeds it and no one wants to sit in the guilt of my sorrow. Kind, and do I walk around asking for kindness? Do I ask too much, are my standards too low, or do you find them too high? Respect yourself, love yourself, you are better than this and stronger. Words wash over and over, they do not cleanse me of my affliction.

I am too kind they say, they don’t know me.

I am selfish, so I cling on to whatever injects a high into my blood, climbing upon your back and forcing you to carry me. I steal everything you give me and claim ownership, that it was mine. I am greedy, I want more always, it is never enough , I have never been enough so I starve for more than enough.

I will never satiate the hunger which screams in my throat begging me to find someone to latch on to. I give you my image and fight only for the reflection of someone loved. Will someone stop the timer ticking down every time I open my mouth? Let me fill my brain back with stories and not memories, let me have something to breathe for.

You only see desperation, and I see your hatred, I see I must move on. Why am I kind?

I am not kind I am a liar. I am imperfect like the rest of you, I am worse, I pretend to be better. It never saves me, I never break out of the sidelines where I will look for myself in every eye, grow cold- or plead- anytime you spit back a picture I don’t like.

I write for no one because I beg for someone to listen. Screaming to be real, to do something, for a body I have made in a space free of reflection.

Step on me, I let you, I like to feel the pain of every heel as it pushes me further into the ground.

I do not believe in fixing broken hearts, I don’t hear God. I saved myself and I am asking why. I am trying to stop expecting, to stop screaming wasted words to ears who won’t hear it.

I am not better, you don’t know how much I am swallowed by desire. I inherited anger I want to let die.

so you don’t see when you step on me.

I never asked and still I am spit, spit out. I can spit back, I am swallowing poison. I can feel it coming back out from my throat, it chokes me into submission, the worst kind

and I wish I was kind, instead.