Undress
I stand in front of mirrors, stare at the
pieces I hate. There are no overstuffed
shirts to hide the pinched flesh around
my waist. The birthmarks dotted around
the alabaster skin are like cigarette burns
handed down through DNA .
No one will
tell me to eat a cheeseburger now. I will
hear that I'm not pretty enough to be
harassed. People will whisper that my skirt
is too tight, that my thighs aren't meant to
be exposed, that they are slabs of meat that
should hang in a slaughterhouse. I will only
undress in the dark corners of my house,
where only a single light bulb can see every
flaw, where I can peel these mistakes off
of my bones and burn the evidence.
This classroom is empty
Dates and the names of battles have never
held any nostalgia for me. These things have
always left me cold. We celebrate death like
we do our weddings and births, with cakes
and parades, with civic pride and a solemn
face. I have spent too many days mourning
the wreckage of lost battles in the stark
silence of evening. I held onto anniversaries
of loss like a worn pair of shoes I'd grown too
attached to, to comfortable with. Now, it has
become a massive cleanse, a dumpster filled
with everything I'd hated about myself when
your rough hands bruised my skin like fruit.
I will not leave you flowers now. We are a clock
stopped forever at 1:37am .
I've always hated
driving in the cold in between of dusk and
daylight. You are a calendar bleached of
content. A yearbook of cautionary tales.
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