Author: poetryfest

I cannot imagine how different your father would be,
Or if he would have met me,
or if you would have had addiction difficulties.
Or truly how God decides to make the call for miscarriages

I’m not mother material,
But I like to think I would’ve been,
If I could’ve met you
I never met your mother, but she didn’t meet your dad
Not the way I had, this man

I never had the privilege of meeting you
And I suppose It’s not my right to
When your dad couldn’t meet his son,
But I love him, and already love you.
And I’m sorry I won’t have the right to.

I wonder then, if your soul will show
In my own son, or hers, or some stranger’s
Or perhaps it exists as the five-year-old It should be,
in a world I’ll never know

So we pray for her, sometimes, and I wonder if that’s weird
Then wonder if she prays too, for your half-brothers, for you
Or if her husband kisses her tummy
Or misses you
The way I don’t have the right to.

taking off my clothes feels like peeling off a sweaty plastic glove
you really have to tug to get it away from fat fingers
and something always tears away as you do.
the silicone sticks to the skin, wet,
white and blue, the colors of a
classic all-american girl.

once in the mall
i opened the changing room door
only to find it occupied. i was horrified,
and i couldn’t look away and slam it shut fast enough.
inside, a gangly girl was stuck in a dress made of plastic-wrap-y silk-
the little black dress was a little bit too small, and she struggled against it,
and it reminded me of a butterfly fighting out of its tiny cocoon too soon.
don’t overthink why that’s what stuck with me, instead of a reminder
of good manners, to always knock on doors. it’s just,
sometimes i feel like a small, stunted caterpillar
who’s too impatient to ever fly.

sometimes
if i don’t look
in a mirror for long enough,
i forget what i look like. afterwards,
this leads to an hour or more of staring deeply
into every single pore on my nose, and wondering if
my voice is deeper in my head. sometimes, before i shower,
i smile at myself, because sometime in history, marilyn monroe
hated herself more than i hate me, and fuck her anyway because
i’m beautiful too, y’know?

If you try to make it pretty
The same hands that gesture and laugh about the ugly
Will soon rot with the rest of a dying thing
It’s killer: the mind

Harshness is my Achilles heel
and tendons, like ribbons, tie into knots
A child cries in the corner because the indifference towards yourself will reflect
to her: a chip off the shoulder of a sour thing forming
And one day the empty pit in your stomach will be a hole in the ground
Open mouth and hollow eyes turned outward as tears drip
upon wilted flowers
everyone else tried to water

Vulnerability is a stake that may save you
Once: cut through the dirt of your backyard, a placeholder for promises
Twice: you can tell the truth now, you’ve faced it alone long enough

Illness isn’t always the initial cause of loss
Letting it simmer in conditions that feed a virus with no treatment
that is what bites
If you saw someone suffering like this, would you leave the hospital bed with no remorse?

And yet we put makeup on the graying skin of a still-alive heart
Cover up concern with words like “healthy” and praise
Fragile bones don’t hold up under pressure
And can’t hold through the night anymore
You wake up frigid, three times

Your first fear responses never included the mirror
or swallowing dinner
At some point it has to be enough
Enough to give up the treachery done
as your body keeps score

It has never been a pretty thing to decay
the realization of this hounds upon your head
Let it be the thing that saves you

I’m not sure when I’ll see you next
for now, know that I think of you
when my nails are garnet red
when the waves in my hair are untamable
when I drink my coffee black
when I smell cigarette smoke
when I walk past the Viktor & Rolf counter
when someone compliments my skin
when I wear platforms, patent leather, and rhinestones
when I notice the double take
when I wake up with smudged black eyeliner in the morning

Smooth, marble lips on pale, porcelain skin.
Cold to the touch, her veins run thin.
Sunken eyes wear exhaustion and dread
of the events that passed and what lies ahead.

She sits on a pedestal for the world to see
Either criticized for her flaws or praised for her beauty.
After years of judgement, scars cover her skin
from unnecessary surgeries to make her thin.

Yet she chooses to continue putting herself through the pain
because without people’s approval, what does she gain?
When beauty is what determines your value in life,
You’ll willingly let a doctor cut your porcelain with a knife.

My favorite color is pink.
It’s always been pink—
the sweet light pink that my mother wears that makes her even softer in my arms,
the bold hot pink of the long nails I have just learned how to grow without biting,
the deep dark pink on the first flag I wave for pride.
Pink is warmth, pink is safety, pink is home,
but until senior year I said my favorite color was blue then purple then black then red then
rainbow then nothing, I don’t have one.
But the truth is my favorite color is pink.

For the longest time, I lied, because
pink was girl and girl was weak so pink was weak and I wasn’t weak.
I wanted to wear long, flowing dresses that I could spin in until I saw stars but
dress was girl and girl was weak so dress was weak and I wasn’t weak.
I wanted to be a princess who fell in love with a merperson but
princess was girl and girl was weak so princess was weak and I wasn’t weak.
I look at myself now, in a pink princess dress, and I am still not weak.
But I’m not always girl, either.

My dad doesn’t understand what genderfluid is, and I don’t know how to explain to him
that I’m still his little girl, I’m just also
his little boy and his little person,
and sometimes all three at the same time.
I feel like I’ve already pushed him far enough, taking five years
to teach him what “asexual” means and how deeply I embody it,
and I worry that asking him to further expand his mind
might crack it open and leave it spilling all over the pavement.
So I let him say, “That’s my girl!” when he’s proud of me and I
leave my two names up on my dorm room door even when he comes to visit,
my little act of bravery leaving me skittish and fumbling for my keys.

My mother knows me better, correcting herself, looking confused
at the idea but smiling at me all the while, letting me buy whatever
weird shit I want from Hot Topic. She goes from “baby girl” to “baby person”
with an apology, and I love it, but it still hurts inside, the fact that she has never
called me “baby boy.” I want to be her “baby boy.”
She told me once, when we were talking about me and the jumbled mess of colors inside of me,
that I will never look like a boy.
And she sounded so sorry when she said it, and she’s right, okay, I know it, she’s right—
I will never be the kind of person who can pass well enough to be called “sir” at a gas station and
I think about that, every time I read a story where all the nonbinary characters are
androgynous and I’m sitting here in my pink princess dress, wanting to be called
a king.

I’ve been thinking so long about why,
whether it’s the fact that all my favorite characters are boys
or the fact that I hate having a chest and a period but at the end of the day
I’m not sure it matters why, because since when have those born in the right bodies had to
explain why they are who they are;
still, I look at myself in the mirror and I realize that I don’t hate my body.
I just hate the words people default to calling me because of it.

I use all pronouns, I mean that, I do.
But that means I use all pronouns,
so don’t just fall back on girl because it’s easiest,
and don’t grasp onto person because it’s safest,
because people are not made to be easy and life is not made to be safe.
Please, call me boy, just once in awhile, just every now and then, even when
I’m wearing a pink princess dress.
Please, make me
a pretty lord, too.

Mark stretches
at the beach.

The beach marks us,
stretches us each.

The tide is coming,
make room,
look at her reach.

Cut the fat from my thighs and / I will season the meat / pluck my eyes like petals and / I will hold them gently / trash them when they get cold and / I will dig their grave / use my hair to patch your sock and / I will thread the needle / when you are done / please do not leave me / I will discard the rest.

This body
This fat, fat, fat, fat, and FAT body
Am I meant to starve
“You’re like a bowling ball” They say

Well I try and try and try
Nothing works
What if I turn to throwing everything up
“Why aren’t you eating” She says

Weren’t you the same person saying im too big
220 the scale never decrease
NEVER
I was meant to starve

I was meant to be chained
No
Imprisoned in this Ugly body
I can’t look in the mirror

One second Im happy with what i look like
The next i want to cut it all off
The comments don’t get to me
Until its my mom

“Your so big don’t you ever feel ashamed of yourself” She says
Ah little does she know
I want it all to end
I want nothing to do with this fat body at all

Pop goes the button
All of a sudden
I’m too fat thats it
Why cant I just be fit

I try to squeeze my fat tummy
Its not at all funny
I’ve thought of a tummy tuck
Yeah I need some luck

To feel comfortable in
My own skin
Will that day ever come
Cause I feel numb

I see my mother
Oh brother
She’s so fat
What if I become like that

I’m lost for words
And so are the birds
I don’t know what to say
And I guess thats okay

I feel hideous
And I am dead serious
That I never feel fine
As my feelings decline

Will I ever get better
And forget her
Not let her control
My life as a whole

Cause right now the voices are loud
And their not at all proud
At what I look like
And so now they’re on strike

To get me to become skinner
And to become thinner
To get my stomach to shrink
And to make me think

To be attractive
And very active
I’m so weak I cant even fight back
And part of me thinks that’s a fact