#faye wraith

I’m not doing this thing properly.

“Such a pretty thing to go to waste”

I take pride in all that’s ugly.

Wait for them to judge me

And I’ll smile knowing I’m not living a lie like the rest of them.

Bones hang from my ceiling

They sway with my ceiling fan.

My fingers mold

My body is a girlish suit for you to twist to fit whatever fantasy you live in

Would blood help fix it?

I’m not something to flaunt over

I’m not something you can place in a box and leave me.

I’m trapped in this bubble you call normalcy

I want to bite the edges

I want to rip my own throat out and eat it.

I scream but your hand is over my mouth

I can taste your skin in my teeth.

I push through to be seen

I push myself so hard my legs want to give out

But I have run my whole life

I know I can handle this as well.

Suck it up

Swallow the rage and smile wide

Clench teeth

I will sit here and stay and wait for you not to look.

Look away

Please

Please look away and let me be everything I’m meant to be.

Stop trying to tame me when I was never meant to be an inside animal.

My body wants to morph

The woods are calling me back

The ground wishes to reach for me and drag me back down

And please

I’m begging you

Let it take me this time.

I really am.

But it isn’t going the way I hoped

It never does.

I try to be a good daughter

But somehow it all goes wrong.

I like the people I’m not supposed to

I act a way someone my age shouldn’t.

Though there’s never been a handbook on how to bleed correctly

So I don’t know what she expects of me.

It’s exhausting to keep the peace

To get out of her way

To press myself so hard against the wall I cave in

But this is just survival

So I guess I should get used to it.

Maybe I can make friends with the spiders

Maybe I can learn how to move through the walls.

Our graves are already assigned under the tree

Carved for three

Wait for our feet to be strung off the ground.

A father

A mother

A daughter waiting to hang.

She marches me into the same building I’ve prayed in for my seventeen years

No one is here

Only the Reverend I’m supposed to trust

Only the choir I’m supposed to be apart of

But they go on without me

I don’t know the words anymore.

It’s not Sunday

But they’re all here

And they’re all waiting for me.

Leave me in the basement

Join the circle

Stare to the floor.

She thinks I’m going to get better

Though I’ve never known what’s wrong.

How I’m wrong

When it started

How she could sniff it out so easily.

The church basement is hazy

Foggy in memory

It’s no clearer in real life.

Words buzz in my ears like the flies that have swarmed my room for years.

Hot and humid

They stick to me.

Tape a verse to my chest

And hope by morning it’s ingrained in my heart.

Sink into skin like hemlock

Kill the part of me she doesn’t like

That doesn’t like her

The part she never liked of herself

And that is why it must be bred out of me.

If I am not a replica of Christ

She doesn’t want it.

So here I will hang

Hands so heavy with a grief that’s never been mine

Nailed to the wood of our home

And she will bury me

Until the part she hates is crucified

The part she craves is resurrected

I will be born again