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.

Your next status (poem #105)

Avert your eyes children,

because your attention span is up,

social media is calling you back into it’s arm,

to hide you from a world filled with pain.

Until it hurts you,

then you will understand;

how quickly the world that embraces your stupid statuses

about being thugs, basketball, or doing drugs

will turn a blind eye to your sorrow as you cut your wrist.

Social media claims to be bringing us together,

but it took the individual out of individuals

and replaced it with what can get the most likes and re-tweets.

I bet you if you put a status out there,

about how you really feel,

the responses will surprise you;

because even though you may receive a million

you could see them the next day

and they would look through you as if your status update was a joke,

and as if that one person

who told you to die

never spoke a word to your soul.

Social media didn’t create friendships…

it created monsters.