She is Strong.

No one can see those tears melted on her cheeks.

Hot and foreboding, flooded with words that struck her so hard she couldn’t breath.

No one can see the scars on her hands.

Red and inflamed, scraped through by thoughts she couldn’t control and screaming she couldn’t stop.

No one can see her rib cage poking through her skin.

Angular and calculated, torn upwards by a mirror that reflects all the awful parts of her and a scale that blatantly states she weighs ten pounds too much.

Everyone can see her smile.

And her beautiful, bright, blue eyes.

Everyone can feel her intelligence and bathe in her warmth.

She will never let anyone see the parts of her that hold weight after weight of envy, jealousy, anger, anxiety, regret, pain, sadness, turmoil and hatred.

That isn’t who she is.

She is bright, and beautiful, and loving.

She is strong.

I Wish I Was Beautiful.

When I look in the mirror, I instantly search for all of my little imperfections. The acne blemishing my face, that one of my eyes is more almond shape and one is more round. That my hair on that particular day sits awkwardly on my head and turns my face sort of egg shaped. I look past everything else.

The one I love says that I look beautiful. Not that I am without imperfections, but that he has learned to move past them to see the beauty. But to myself, I do not see myself as beautiful.

My thighs are too round, my teeth too yellow, my upper arms no longer gracefully curve down as they did in my younger years, but now are just extra fat perched on me. My nose is too small to even be considered button shaped, and my ears are too large.

I am not the standard of beauty I should be. I feel as though everyone else looks more normal than I. That I am the odd one out.

I wish I was beautiful.

What to Do

What do we do when words seem to lose meaning?

When even the greatest depths of emotion seem lost, when the syllables have been wasted?

When the very meter uttered, resolves itself, morphs, into arduous tones of bitter spite?

It takes not but seconds to become plagued with meaningless words.

And in that we find no redemption in the conversation.

All other words seem like they aren’t worth uttering.

And yet, there is no one word that I would like to produce that would mend the brokenness of my own creation.

What can we do when there is nothing left to say?

I do not require syllables to turn the picturesque madness to unrequited wit.

Nor do I inhibit the other from stating what they might find to mend our bonds.

But there is no more meaning behind the phrases we utter because there are no words we can use to mend what has been already broken.

There are no directions, manuals nor recipes to follow in this concoction of half made words.

The weaver has left her loom, the mechanic has left his shop, and the baker has left the pastry uncooked.

So we stare into the darkness of the unknown, where adjectives, explicatives and feeling float freely in time.

And when we reach out into that vast expanse of nothing, filled yet with everything, we can feel nothing but the strange feeling of nothing.

The air of language squeezes through our fingers, and teases our tongues with explanation.

But the meaning is lost.

And we haven’t the chance to grab it back, to pull it into our ever growing shore and torture it until we might feel again.

But it escapes once more.

And we haven’t an idea of where to go from here.

The map is gone.

And with it, our feeling.

And what I ask you is simply,

What do we do?

I Wonder What She Looks Like

Death is inevitable. She will happen. She will be there.

People will mourn even if the person who has died believes no one will.

I wonder what death looks like. No, not the sight of death becoming someone but what the figure of death actually looks like. To me, she is tall. She is dressed in black, not in black clothes per say, more engulfed in blackness. She is skinny, but not too skinny. She stands tall and strong, empowered. But the aura she carries around her carries the weight of many years of work. She is pale, almost white, her lips are skinny and she is bony. She stands as tall as a tree, and while she looks frail, you could only assume the strongest thoughts about her. She has no voice to use, because she doesn’t need one for the job she is about to do. She is beautiful, but not pretty.

She stands there, waiting for me. Arms open, her black water eyes are waiting for me. She nods in approval before letting me enter into her shadowy arms and she hugs me. She wraps her arms around my torso, they’re warm and inviting. I rest my head on her chest, hands at the sides of my face, not hugging back, but more resting in her embrace. She is warm, for being death, and sliding into her arms is like slipping into bath water. She rests her bony chin on my shoulder so we are wrapped in one another. Tears fall. But I do not know why. There’s a sob here and there, but we stand there in that moment, with her arms blanketing my body, and me being loved. We don’t whisk off to my resting place, but we are not standing in the spot where I no longer exist. We are standing in a white forever where light seems to come from everywhere but never blinds my tear filled eyes. There is nothing but us. Her arms, my tears, and our love.

She does not console me. It is not her job. She does not speak. It is not her place. She eases me. Without saying a word, or changing anything, she eases me. She lets the tears roll down my cheeks, she lets my sobs come out in bursts, and she holds me. I do not have to explain why I am crying to her, even if she uttered the question from her slender lips I could not explain why. But she does not ask, and that almost makes me feel safer. While she is death, her chest rises and falls with every breath, whether they are real or not is what I wonder at a later time. For now, they feel real and they feel like love.

I never thought that death could love, but maybe she isn’t loving me. Maybe she’s just doing her job, but in that moment I feel loved. I feel like no one can touch me, because no one can. I am dead. But she is still there. She is holding me, and touching me, and loving me.

Death loves. And she lingers.

Be Still

Be still, and do not drift back into a life of subtle conversations and first impressions.

Be still, carry your shoulders as though the world is holding your reigns and you’re fighting with all you have to be free.

Be still, and love like every moment might take you twelve years back to forgotten promises and still winds.

Be still, remember that tomorrow only comes so quickly and yesterday rarely escapes unnoticed.

Be still, and spend hours intertwined with the one you love, like someday the maze of your arms and legs may find new paths to follow.

Be still.

Just,

Be still.

Don’t Let Me Go

You’re moving on a straight plane.

You are constant, and unchanging.

Life moves past you in waves,

And you being the way you are, are gracious and remind me of the need to breathe,

and stay.

And yet to me you seem as though you are straying.

I feel like you are connected to me by a tether, that expands forever,

And yet constantly feels as though it is threading, getting ready to snap.

I reach for you, fingertips into a dark only I can see.

Screaming out your name for help,

To stay with me,

To remind me of the things I am inept of doing.

And while our tether stays connected,

And your eyes stay locked on the horizon,

Tracking your course,

I feel lost and alone.

Scared to exist in solitude,

Terrified to survive in nothingness that consumes me, swallows me.