seen from Belgium
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seen from United States

seen from Spain

seen from Türkiye

seen from United States
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seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from United States
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seen from United States
seen from Singapore

seen from Spain
seen from Brazil

seen from Spain
I’ve been told I’m not a good enough girl
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 was never meant to kneel, I was never meant to pray to something not there, I was never meant to be cleansed. They saw me wandering on the side of the road and instead of letting me be, they thought they could save me. I didn’t need to be saved, I just needed to be free.
This page is a blur, like we so easily have become. These words bleed and cry and they hold the knife that dully, slowly, rips the wound open. The wound I thought healed with you, with this love I could hold and break down to and never had to question if you were there. But now? Now, where did you go? Why is this room so cold? So dark, so haunted, so much the same. Why is your face a blank? Why am I trying to reach you and why are your hands turning to dust? I guess this meant more to me than it ever did for you. Why does this hurt so damn much? Why am I forever the one who grapples with this?
— though maybe these questions are life-long mysteries, that will never have a conclusion.
I’m trying.
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
And I will come back to her.