Author: poetryfest

The body, the mind, and the heart of a woman
Entangled within the soul of a man
A love as is female’s, an empathy as is girl’s
Softness and corrosion as is common with women
Within the vastness of eyes that is a contemplative boy’s
Underneath lashes pattered by a girl as she watches the clouds roll by
A soul to oppose the physical, a mind to oppose the soul
Violet hues amongst peach and ocean and the galaxies that bloom from within
A fabulous cacophony comes out at the end,
Two parts woman, one part star
With millions of intricate details and thoughts and experiences and loves
Unwhole without all that is, will be, and was, an impossible mix of each
So simple on paper so complex from scratch
The divine within body, holding close every part of one
Nought to be understood by any or all
But to simply love, to hold, to think, to feel
Perhaps even to be
As one was always meant to

It probably started when I was eight,
when mom started buying Equate weight loss
shakes to replace after-school snacks, worrying
I’d outgrow the kids’ section before my friends.

I spent hours each day holding in my core,
feeding on compliments I received from grandparents
on my shrinking waist in my third-grade graduation dress.
My ribs sore, my center burning, I held my breath
during every second of the chorus reception.

My biggest insecurity is no longer numbers on tags,
my side profile, or stretch marks striping my breasts,
but the two asymmetrical flabs just below my ribs
which my doctor says are from years spent sucking in.

often ask myself if I could change myself
physically for you, would I?
Would I let go of my girlhood memories and horrors of being a woman?
Would I say to hell with my breast? Figure you know what’s best.
If I traded bodies with your other lover, would you choose me again?
Or would you choose someone else and I’d be
stuck in another body I feel misplaced in?

please, peace, perfection

perfection, it’s what you need to be. it is what you need to have. you manage emotions and feel for people who can’t care to burden themselves with the feelings they fear.

this is perfection and it can be achieved here:

control,
contain,
consumed.

consumed by constant fear of the impending step out of line the imperfect unattractive life the ugly number that feels like the difference between satisfied and perfect

stop,
stare,
starve.

the deadly directions that sound like they derive from demons in your brain that fill your head with pain

and make you want to shrink

into something small into something that pushes you to the brink of skinny and happy.

try
cry
die

left feeling numb. no emotions to make you anxious anymore

no worry to stop you from starving until you collapse on the floor until you lose everyone that wanted to help

even though all your emotions have already been felt

enough for a lifetime

and it’s like they’ve been used up.

this is perfection.

the drained complexion and haunted reflection

this is perfection.

It took one image to loath her
Horrible, I thought
My mother knew
So, she told me a story

She spoke of flowers
One could discern,
How flowers have unconventional beauty,
How its incommensurate petals bestow life,
How one bows to be measured in avoirdupois,
How one watches a pair of sunbursts

One day,
The atmosphere ripened,
Heat thickened the garden
Now, each resplendent wished to bow down
Feasting upon the Lincoln green grass
Too late, perianth rapidly cascaded
One lasted, head tilted down, she remained strong

My mother, she knew
And I knew the silence of her breath
I took three steps away from the mirror
I could feel every flesh I have, the hefty desire to cut it
I was not an untamed flower nor tamed
I was just by the street, awfully growing and growing,
No one wanted to rest their eyes at

Seven years, people keep passing through
The flower could not stop growing
No one sat down and rested
A “revolting sight” was what she was told
A horrible cataclysm brewed inside her
And her own hands clung unto her
She was no longer looking for nourishment

Lost the key where she usually hides
So, she cried and compromised
Her puerile jokes once true, now broken
And no one caught the subtle truth
Alone,
She bowed behind them
As I withered too, unnoticed,
And the ambience changed

I’ve learned to become your pull apart dolls,
I can’t change this reflection carved into
this diamond mirror—
I’ve been burned into this glass.

My lungs wither, stomach sucked in,
I cry until the breath’s been wrung from my body—
Hang me out to dry.

I’ve taken this needle to my belly,
Sucking out this impurity you punish,
My pain collides with your perfection.

This mirror cracks under strain,
It’s cracked edges carving my mouth
into picket fence grins,
Twist my skin for your joy,
Spill this fools blood.

Stains in this white satin doll,
I hold myself together with pink ribbon and dandelions,
Engraving hips into a perfect hourglass.

Removing my ribs, it doesn’t matter
This is all for beauty,
You tell me beauty is pain,
And it seems my pain morphs into you beauty so I’ll keep it up.

I shave away this skin,
Sit in this bleach water bathtub, and
And sew my skin together with the edge of this knife,
Flowers become my thread.

This dead-faced girl,
Body devoured by rats,
Bereft of life.

Color me the shade of crimson
You find in running rivers
Of all this I’ve done to be your perfect
Pull apart doll.

Your reimagined picture
Has ended in my destruction

plastic
what are you but plastic
a cold, hard thing
lifeless on cold, hard tile

making me something
cold and hard
a tin woman
trembling inside

how did you sink
your claws into me
how did I let you
dig, dig, dig so deep

am I the only customer
of your printing press
the curve of your quill
staining even the sun

I am blind to anything
that is not you
try to reconcile the
push and pull

justify the highs with
the twisted relish of
those delicious lows
the never low enough

limbo limbo you sing
and I bend backward
to find out
how low can we go

my diary is covered
in moments we shared
photos timestamped
by my dedication to you

a single number
is enough to destroy
to starve, to zombiefy
my entire being

every time I think your
sharp talons have dulled
you whisper sweet lies
and the scars resurface

plastic
what are you but plastic
a cold, hard thing
alive in my lifeless mind

I don’t remember ever being beautiful.
Must have been, at some point.
Kindergarten maybe?
All I know is, by third grade,
My tummy was a tad too
Big to be beautiful.

But don’t worry. This isn’t a poem
About hating my body. Actually,
I’ve always quite liked her
Despite, despite. She was always
So strong. Utilitarian. Through every
reinvention, she always looked
Like me. Reason enough.

I have longed to be beautiful though.
Nothing to do with appearance.
I’ve longed to be beautiful because
Beautiful things are loved for
No reason but
existing.

Don’t worry. I’ve had my share
Of love. But, off. Always felt so,
Utilitarian. I used to love
Being loved
For a reason. My intelligence,
Often, reason enough.
Until I lost my reason. And love
Never had much to do
With reason anyway.

A horoscope said that
I had a talent for making things
Beautiful. It’s true.
I surround myself
With beautiful things. And
They say beauty is in the eye
Of the beholder, and I have an eye
to behold beautiful things.

It’s true, I have strong reason,
So utilitarian. Reason enough. But
Better yet there is beauty
In my eye. I’m the off-white
Just right shade to bring
Beauty into focus when others
Don’t see. And I think that’s
Beautiful, and reason enough,
To be loved without reason.

I sold a mouthful of teeth for breath reek, for rot, and for wreckage
For a set of ribs and a rate of exchange.
This was the conversion:
patience (substitute for suffering) is equal to lbs lost.
I dealt in irregulated heartbeats for a stomach I could
Bounce a quarter from.
Bartered a year of sugars, starches, stillness
For black coffee and bloodletting.
Months in the toilet with an acid spatter smile.
Punch the clock, hour fast by hour fast I was getting holier
Because I bought into the give and take of girls, of men:
The tears, the circumvention, and the currency of need.
I played roulette, I shorted the supermarket.
People have sold their souls for sillier reasons.

Now, they tell me that this was a crime. They tell me that I’m paying.
One year of penance for one year of pride.
Drill a tooth for every pound lost, every glance gained.
After all, I did some petty crime.
I used myself as collateral, slipped the noose of the “set point”.
And now, you all get to sit in judgement, critiquing my methodology.
Disavow my avarice all you want. Shake your heads all you wish.
I have but one defense:
The devil is a broker with an unbalanced scale and I was just
Trying to underweigh a feather.

The paper bird I’d created fell from my hands, dissipating into the water.
The black dye in the pulp clouded the silver mirror.
Swimming to the surface, Golden light erupted from her eyes.

Quietly, her gaze told me to follow her, so I stuck one hand in her eyes
my face followed after, and my lungs filled with her honeyed water.
If I breathed too quickly, my throat would be filled with a solid mirror.

I breathed slowly, looking at all the bird showed me in the water,
watching my hands turn into coral, pink and yellow reflected in the mirror.
I wondered how she would see my new hands, would they be pretty in her eyes?

I looked back up, searching for her, but in her place was a fish the same gold as her eyes.
Her billowing tail followed behind her like a cape, heavy behind her in the water.
My face turned pink, laid before my coral hands, I was also scared of the mirror.

I grew jealous of her graceful flow, loudly announcing her gait in the water.
She turned to me and blinked, I never knew a gilded fish could close her eyes.
I wondered what she saw, my tough coral cheeks ate at the mirror.

The colors in my hands reflected her scales, the pink and gold floated up in the water.
Were we really the same two people, making sure our eyes didn’t look into our mirror?
I wanted to hug her, just how long had she been lying to her eyes?