Mourning Glory

I wake up to sunlight shrieking

wonder if one day

my bed

will be a graveyard

my bones fossilized between its sheets

there are days when I don’t have the strength to get up

days when I hold my core

to stop it from crumbling

days when the mirror is the nastiest girl in school

I cover up

cover the zits

cover the excess fat

cover all the ugly

swallow

swallow pills to fix my acne

pills to liquidate my pudge

pills to make me seen and not heard

heard the makeup across the counter

coat myself with foundation,

to create a thicker skin

a wall to seal ruptures beneath

this crazy

this crazy bitch

bitching and twitching

I’m a wind up doll dancing out of turn

it is always a dance

a tapping across my flesh

fleshy ants colonizing me

I’m hollow

Wood infested with termites

sometimes I wish I was ugly

had an excuse for the hatred

radiating from colliding eyes

everyone treats me like the kid daddy never wanted

because I am the kid who daddy never wanted

who still wanted to want her self

I have dreams of bulldozing people

aspire to make myself flat

purge my personality

because they don’t want a woman with a personality

they convict me for convictions

say I’m prettier with my mouth shut

that girls this girly shouldn’t act like a man

shouldn’t fight like a man

shouldn’t fight a man

but surviving each morning is fighting a man

my bathroom is a battlefield

I’ve cried in that shower

ripped off skin in that sink

I’ve learned to vomit so it doesn’t mess up my hair

mess up

mess up

it’s a mess

i’m a mess

possessed

by this flesh

by this need to get ready

I wonder if one day

it won’t feel like night at my vanity

I won’t massacre my own face

getting up won’t be going down

to a hell

I call my morning.