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.

BODY IMAGE Poem: all this shit- and beautiful, too, by Sophia Louise

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?

BODY IMAGE Poem: Dying Mother Lies, by Madelyn Scholle

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

BODY IMAGE Poem: Girl in Porcelain, by Felicity Portoulas

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.