I’m not sure I want to be beautiful.

I am past caring about that.

I just want to dress nice and feel good.

I am past giving a rat’s.

I don’t want to attract the wrong attention

nor relive the harassment I faced in my youth.

I don’t want the kind of tension

a man’s desire always brings forth.

Why is being beautiful

so important anyway?

I would rather be brave, smart, funny, kind –

Almost anything else at the end of the day.

Why are women so obsessed,

so jealous and cruel

to any poor girl

who is beautiful?

When you’re beautiful

people are only nice

because they want sex from you.

And I guarantee –

Absolutely nothing is free.

Don’t give people what they want,

and you’re still beautiful,

beautiful and dead.

You’re a pound of flesh.

The world doesn’t care

if you cry the lonely nights away.

They will play a small violin for you.

You are beautiful.

And don’t you dare

have feelings,

have disappointments,

fail to constantly smile

like a Barbie doll,

also be smart and brave and funny and kind,

because what others lack in themselves they will envy in you.

But don’t dim your light, sister.

Always stay true.

This is from my chapbook, Cigarettes and Sunsets, which hasn't been released yet (I'll update with a link later).

I chose the writhg prompt "beauty" and decided to write how I feel about it. I feel that it's ultimately lonely and painful to be beautiful, but it's also seen as a "privilege," so no one is allowed to talk about the cons, just the pros.

In my opinion, the cons outway the pros. I have experienced way too many insecure, cruel, and jealous women and also way too much sexual harassment.

I also spent years hating myself and my body because I didn't feel pretty enough.

Now I just want to dress comfortably and feel good. And looking back, I can't believe beauty ever mattered to me.

What I want now is to be wanted for my sense of humor, my kindness, my warmth, my intelligence.

Sigh. I can dream.

Trying to trust God

is like

falling off a mountain with no harness.

I don’t feel God has ever been there for me.

I feel like nothing,

no one,

a spec that no one cares about.

How can I cry out to God

when my tears have been ignored for so long?

I’ve had to be strong

all on my own.

Alone.

With no one who cared.

And I’m scared

to put my faith in Him.

Still,

I get down on my knees and pray,

“Oh, God,

don’t you forget about me.

I know I’m not special.

You didn’t give me any gifts.

I know I’ve made mistakes,

the little lamb who drifts.

I wandered away from You,

and I suffered for that.

Yes, it’s true.

Can

You

Please forgive me?

Amen.

I say again,

Amen!

Take this pain away.

Clear the rain.

Make me whole,

whole again.

I’m trusting you

because I love you.

And deep down I know

You love me too.”

God has always been there for me. Footprints in the sand and all that. But lately, I just feel so abandoned.

Today, I cried.

Cried for the first time in a long time.

But it felt so good to release

what the little pills repress.

And the mess

inside of me resurfaced,

came up for air.

The world doesn’t care

that you weep into the night.

Do it anyway.

Pure spite

in the face of a cruel world—

Oh, what false world

do you live in?

A fantasy world where love exists

and people are good?

People are rotten to the core.

And love?

Love is a dream.

Nothing more.

This was about a one-sided relationship I was in, where I just poured into the other woman's cup and got nothing back but breadcrumbs.

This was for the woman I met who didn't believe in love. She hadn't made her revelation yet.

From my chapbook Phoenix Rising. Get it now!