My Body Is Home
I am feeling my soul re-entering my body
my body is not only an offering
but an altar.
I have spent this last year
not surrounded by bodies
no longer having anyone else
to compare myself to.
After a year of isolation
I now am picking pieces of broken mirrors
gluing them to a wall
I now want to see myself.
I am no longer hiding,
I am the sun
my body no longer a prison.
As it’s getting warmer
I am displaying my body
as a deity of self-love
my soul lifting as the heat rises,
in this summer season
my body now feels like home.
Husk
I am a husk of what I used to be
a field after the harvest
a memory of bounty.
I went on a journey of self-exploration
to only get hopelessly lost
when I look back at my past self the woman I so desperately wanted to change
she was a superhero
she was fearless,
she was art from the murals she painted
to the curves that blessed her body
she was fat and beautiful.
I wish I had been taught that those things are not antonyms but can be wedded so beautifully
now I get lost in counting calories
resentful of hunger
I am entwined in stitches
clawing at a body I don’t feel like I own.
No one ever dared but to call the old me anything
other than beautiful,
now I am just a dress size
questioning my beauty, my value
this new body isn’t home
it’s a prison sentence.
I used to be a superhero
I used to a bird, accidentally clipped my own wings
lost that spark, put out the fire unknowingly
Can I ask you a question?
How do you relight a fire,
after you accidentally extinguish it?
Store Bought is Fine
They say you can not buy happiness
What a privilege that statement weights
Those who do not think money has not one once to do with happiness
Have never been without food or a home for a night.
Or co pays for doctors fee
They say you can not buy happiness
The clique that homemade is better then store bought.
If you can not buy happiness
Can you be prescribed it?
Does my little bottle invalidate me
I do have to buy it after all
It’s been a few generations
No one in my family has seem to get the recipe quite right for happiness
Buried in vices and words unspoken
That creak as loud as floor boards in my grandmother’s house
Maybe my family just never knew the recipe
If my happiness needs assistant
Is it not as good as home made happy?
No
I am here to make a proclamation
I am here to tell you that the store I bought is fine.
Can not make your own serotonin?
Store bought is fine
It does not matter if it comes wrapped up in blue pills or in yoga Matts
Your self love your happy has no boundaries
If homemade is the only authenticity that will be accepted
Then I am an imposter of good times
Maintaining my happiness
Is filled with doctors and pill bottles
and knowing my limits
I am okay with my prescribed assisted happiness
Because if this isn’t authenticity happy
The joy I can now feel that fills in my gut
And swells until it almost burst then my chest
If that is all an illusion
It stills feels better
Then my authentic despondency .
Flowers in My Rib Cage
Used to feel weightless around you
Gravity settled back into my bones
Planted seeds of delusional love
Was to wide eyed and distracted
To notice the soil filling my lungs
Flowers like bloodroot in my veins
and bleeding hearts sprouted
through my rib cage
Poisoning my mental state
Gasping for air Choking on petals
Respiring with the taste of
Gravel caught in between
My teeth
Caught like words
That I shouldn’t have allowed
To leave the tip of my tongue
Gravity settled into my bones again
Has me sinking beneath the earth
At first I couldn’t breath
Now I’m hoping that what was planted
Beneath my rib cage
Blooms and beats again
Cosmetic Idolatries
Carved myself
Out of the clay of my old body
Statue state of self Loathing
Couldn’t stomach myself
Bariatric solutions
Lifted weight from my chest
Carved out parts of my ears
I hadn’t been listening to
My Inter deity
Scars like constellations
Tell stories
Of my self love journey
No longer breaking mirrors
Cut off locks of hair
To know my femininity
Isn’t entwined in pony tails
Talk to me like a goddess
Before you walk into my temple
Dietty vanity
entwines into a confident reality
Don’t touch my crown
I break necks not hearts
Self admiration
Looked down upon in this society
Dreamed as a seven deadly sin
Lusting for who I want to be
Pride in who I am becoming
Cosmetic Surgeon savors
Friendly reminder
Cosmetic procedures
if done for your self love
Is an act of triumph
Noting shameful
In becoming
Your own godess
Cosmetic Savior
You have been judge
By the Eurocentric gods
Of fashion
The social court is now in session
Vogue emotion
Your sins were being fat
Speaking out, not being a cookie cutter
Copy of your peers
Repentance
Self Crucifixion
Under the surgeons knife
Resurrection in a new vainglory
Filter feed
Off of praises
Diet of diet pills
Hide the scars from surgeries
Cover your sins of being less than perfect
Kiss me with your pouty
Silicone injected lips
Appropriate big thighs
Break men’s necks
While they break your hearts
Did you realize
Stiletto struck through your heart
This was the price you were willing to pay
For glory
Portion Sized Words
Wish my mother taught me portion sizes
I took to much in conversation
Have a hard time not talking
Wish I had been taught
A dose of silence is okay
Wish I had known
What portion sizes were acceptable
For serving your trauma at the dinner table
Pour too much to quickly
You’ll turn people away
Portion sizes
Would have helped me know
Someone who speaks over you
At any capacity
Is not worth ingesting
Ingest me
In my entirely
I am a one servicing size is the entire package
Do not need to cut myself into peices
Bite sized
For you to sink your teeth into
Lowered my voice because
It was to loud to be swallowed
Wish this had been a lesson passed down
from grandmother to mother
But if it has to start with
Let me teach my daughter
The biggest rule In portion size is
If your soul is still hungry
In the presence of a lover
They are not the one
And if someone tried to cookie cuter you
Into bite sizes pieces for their pleasure
Let them choke on your entirety
You are not to be
Made smaller
Self Love Hunger
Extracted pieces of my body
In efforts to find myself
Removed my stomach
Felt let it through my chest
Ate myself into abosety
Unable to decipher
My spiritual hunger from physical
Unsatisfied Voracity
Food like poison
Calories like nooses
Health depleting
Food unlike lovers
Never told me it stopped loving me
Emptiness sat beneath my rib cage
Laying in my gut
Bitter bites of learning
I can’t tell you the day I woke up
No longer craving poison
Sit myself in pews
Buy myself flowers
I've been nutrishing myself
With self love
Because I got tired of feasting on
The emptiness of self hate
Mirrors and Bleeding Tongues
I am,
carving out my own tongue
with broken glass.
From mirrors I broke
in anger at my appearance.
I am,
stitching together
new words
accompanied with my name
like beautiful, and enough,
worthy of love.
I am,
forgiving my past self.
Using kind words
past self only
spoke the language she was taught.
Ones deeply rooted
in misogyny, and fatphobia
sugar coated
and wrapped tightly in phrases like,
“You’d be pretty if you lost a little more weight.”
I am,
learning a new language
kinder words and whispering it
to the reflection I see.
Baseball Bats and Shattered Glass
I am breaking up with mirrors with a bat.
Shattered glass covers the floor
homage to self-love.
I am cutting ties with counting calories
I am cutting the throats of those who ask
“Should you be eating that?”
My bones are sturdy
I am my own home
you should be grateful you can perceive me.
I am breaking up
with the mirage I see
when I look at the mirror
and do not love what is looking back at me.
I am a temple,
tribute to the goddess inside me
she lies between my ribcage
I am picking up the shattered glass
and looking at myself
without the influence of others.
I am breaking up
with the self-image of me
that was never meant to be.