My tongue (poem #166)

My tongue feels a little too big for my mouth today,

So I slip my tongue ring out

Look at the hole that is there…

and wonder if it reflex the hole in my heart from when I got it.

I don’t get my piercings because I hated myself I got them to feel unique.

Needles made me feel more important and like myself in my own skin that I ever could. It’s sad to say that I had to add artwork to porcelain to feel like the beautiful girl I was born as.

When I asked I admit I had an eating disorder,

before brushing over the fact that before includes yesterday.

I starve myself not for attention but to feel accepted in my own skin.

I don’t feel welcome in my body,

the stretch marks are pinpoints of foreign lands.

I’m just trying to navigate in a world with the map of my body,

but my compass is upside down.

I forgot how to read directions when they started with “10 easy steps to…”,

cosmopolitan gave me guides on how to get lost,

men claim to have found me,

but I’m still standing here stranded in the branches of my rib-cage.

I’ve told myself enough times that being lost is ok,

it just means you haven’t reach your destination,

but I still feel like the little girl who put on makeup too soon so she wouldn’t recognize the flaws she once saw as constellations.

I don’t hide behind my body, I hide in it,

I put jewelry and art out as a gallery to distract you from the cracks in the walls.

When asked if I know that I am beautiful,

I respond does beauty start with starvation and end with pain because if so I have felt beautiful for year,

but if it doesn’t please leave me alone because i don’t want to find out what beautiful means anymore because I know I wouldn’t recognize it.

My tongue feels too big for my mouth today,

so I slide the metal between my teeth to feel whole again.

Why did I believe the lie I that I am ugly? (Poem #39)

I looked in the mirror today,

and saw a million flaws…

1. My nose is too big

2. My eyebrows are too bushy

3. My bottom lip isn’t proportional to my upper lip

4. My hair is too frizzy and whenever I straighten it it never stays that way

5. There are too many zits on my face

6. My chest isn’t big enough

7. My stomach won’t go away

8…..9….10….

You get the point…

I stared in the mirror and saw all the things I have been told were not pretty enough.

I have fallen to the part of society that has choked me since I was 11 years old,

I took at the things that were thrown at me and,

though they did not break my bones,

they left bruises.

I did suffer depression,

I did suffer from an eating disorder,

I did put myself through and unhealthy amount of physical work,

I put myself through everything I could think of in order to make myself feel pretty…

Why am I doing this?

Why do I believe this?

When I was a little girls,

I thought I was beautiful,

with my blue eyes

and crazy blond hair,

but one day those eyes weren’t enough,

and the crazy hair needed to be tamed.

But FUCK THAT!!!!

FUCK THE WORLD FOR TELLING ME I NEED TO BE PERFECT,

AND FAKE TO BE BEAUTIFUL!

I honestly felt like throwing my mirror across the room and watching it smash to a million pieces,

I would have loved to break my hand breaking that mirror if it reminded me that I am a beautiful person,

because I did believe that before,

I believed I was a beautiful princess who deserved a man who would see me as a beautiful queen.

But instead of destroying that mirror I did something else,

I looked back in the mirror,

and looked harder at myself,

and this is what I saw,

1. My eyes are a mix of blue, gold, grey, and are extremely unique

2. My nose is perfectly sized for my nose ring to sit in a place that brings summitry to my face

3. My eyebrows make my eyes pop when I manage them

4. My lips are the perfect shape to show more emotion than I could imagine

5. My waist size is healthy

6. My boobs are proportionate and if I wanted them to get any bigger I would have to gain more weight

7. My body is more than the sexualized image of what a women should be

8. I am beautiful

9. I am pretty

10. I am unique