You look so tantalizing
With stars sprinkled like glitter in your hair
Am I allowed
To lick the colours from your lips,
To taste the galaxies inside of you?
I long to hear
The hymn of your pulse,
history coursing through your veins
And to count the constellations twinkling
Behind your eyes.
I could melt
into the sunlight of your arms,
Your ancient fire blistering my skin
Bruising my fingers to the bone
For fear of letting you go.
There are those who say that I am vain
For loving myself too much;
For adoring all my curves and edges
Every dimple and mark and such.
I tell them the story of how I gained my power
From the war I once waged on my skin
I show them my lesions, my battle scars,
I share with them every sin.
For there was a time, not long ago
When I was my own worst enemy
I hurt myself, my body and soul in ways
For which there was no remedy.
One day a girl looked up at me
And asked about my scars
She called me an angel fallen from heaven
As pretty as shooting stars.
In memory of that girl I stand,
As proud as an old oak tree
Because I have learned to love myself;
I have earned every part of me.
Where did you get your sensitivity?
From my mother, I said
For she was always beaten down
Her eyes full of tears unshed.
Where did you get your sullenness?
From my mother, I retorted
For she was sorrowful and sad
Her views of herself contorted.
Where did you get your patience?
From my mother, I replied
For she was the calm in the midst of chaos
And taught her time to bide.
Where did you get your anger?
From your mother I suppose?
I got my anger from my father,
But I use words instead of blows.
I am made of bullets; shrapnel and biting metal
Teeth dripping lead and lips bleeding red
Your lips are soft honey speaking gentleness,
Gossamer and silk-skinned being.
I tear down citadels; built for beauty and war
Thrones erected of bones and shattered hearts
You felled my fortress, breaking brick and stone
with the most tender of caresses.
My palms crush stars to powder; sand in clenched hands
Fists bathed in violet and blue fire
Your fluttering eyelashes a gale, cooling my fingers
And turning molten star-dust to gold.
I fell for you like leaves in autumn,
Knowing it is time to let go of the tree and float on the breeze.
I fell like the colors of fire,
Allowing myself to be carried on the wind of your sigh
The gentle flutter of your eyelashes a butterfly effect
Shaking my sturdy roots until I am quaking on my branches.
You are scared to touch
For fear of ruining me
But
Did it ever occur to you
That I am begging to be touched
And dying to be ruined?
Like liquor on my lips
Your kiss burns just as much
As absinthe on my tongue.
Eyes
Always searching, never meeting.
Hands
Always reaching, never touching.
Lips
Always willing, never kissing.
Love
Always whispered, never spoken.
Us
Always almost, never truly.
I remember the first time I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize the person staring back at me. Gaunt and ghostly, the girl I saw was as pale as she was thin, and when I say thin, thin is an understatement. She was flat, like a paper doll, as though there was nothing inside holding her together. Blood had been replaced by water, organs had been removed leaving cavities of empty space. The empty space made it easier to confine the rest of her insides, make them tighter, push them together until they were indistinguishable from each other and you couldn’t see where one piece of meat ended and another began. Bones became wires, pulling tired limbs out of bed every morning, moving stiffly about like a puppeteer that had become its own creation. The bags below her eyes hung for miles down her frail face, her bones protruded from her sallow frame like death had already touched her, because I suppose in a way it had.
The girl in the glass struck me, for I could see the similarities. She was me, I knew it, but unlike me she wore her hollow on the outside for the world to see. Anyone who cared to look at her would know from a glance just how empty she really was, how broken and beaten and bare she had allowed herself to become but they could stare at me for hours and think I was whole. That I was happy, that I was alive when inside there was nothing but black disease and bitter loneliness, because I remembered who that girl in the mirror used to be. I recalled her bright smiling face and that ridiculous laugh, now turned to silence and the face of repeated rejection. What used to be a plump, healthy figure, round curves of flesh over all of her surfaces, no part of her skeleton on display, had hardened to jagged stone edges, brittle breaking bones, dying from the lack of love she had given herself.
That girl was me. The sound of my heart tearing into final shreds drowned out the sobs wracked from my dry throat when I saw what had become of that girl. I saw how far she had fallen and I knew the girl I held in my mind was nothing but a memory, a ghost to haunt the one who stood before me, and as I looked down at myself, at paper legs and protruding elbows, I realized I had done this to her… to myself.
That night I cradled the girl of my memories, tried to hold her in my arms like smoke on cool water, barely touching but it was enough. We sat until dawn, unmoving, and as the sun rose, the fog that had made its home inside my head like an uninvited guest began to dissipate. The cobwebs clinging to every dark corner inside of me were dusted away, and the windows I had kept locked were thrown open, letting the warm morning sun shine into the fractures in my soul, illuminating me from the depths of the blackness I had allowed myself to become accustomed to.
So forgive yourself for every time you forgot your worth. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and if nothing else, understand this: love yourself. You are you for a reason.
the Honest Poet