Broken Mirrors

“Sometimes when my grief is a mechanical bull like today I want to love anybody but me but nobody else wants to ride.”

“There was one summer returning over and over there was one dawn I grew old watching”

“I know that feeling. You have to do something. You have to change something radically, because you can’t stay like you are for another second, or you’re going to explode.”

“I wonder if there will come a day when I do not measure my worth by the depth of the indents your fingertips have left on my hips. I dream of the moment I realize that although men look at me the same way they see the deli aisle at the supermarket, I am not a package to be held and ripped apart at your convenience. I fantasize about the feeling of freedom I will one day own as I step out of the shower and stare myself in the mirror and scream that my skin is no longer a prison that I must try to escape from. On my worst days, you are underneath each layer of dirt that I can never scrub hard enough away. You are the blood that runs down the drains as I tell myself that this is what being clean means. It is only when all my cells have been stripped from my aching core that I can say nobody has seen me naked. I regret the men that I have allowed to undress me without first telling them the way Christmas day haunts me the way children see monsters lurking in the corners of their darkened bedrooms. I regret the men that I have allowed to run their nails down my spine without first letting them understand that I have killed myself in my mind time and time again. I regret the men that I have imagined myself loving without ever doing so. I wonder if there will come a day when I do not see myself as this pile of bones stacked on top of mistakes - the skeleton in the closets of all of the men who have never stayed around long enough to know that the memory of me will be the hardest part of getting out of bed every day.”