Into your arms,
Into your soul,
I'll set you free
when no one knows
that you're enslaved
by the burden of
humanity.

i am hidden somewhere behind hushed
silences, sporadic breaths, and a
fluttering heartbeat

i am sat towards the front of the
class with tears brimming my eyes
and fingers dotted with blood and paint

maybe someone will see me someday

i slipped the silk fabric over the curve of my hip and the scarred flesh of my thigh in a dressing room with three of my friends behind me, ******* in the fat of my stomach. they say black is supposed to be slimming but it only made me bloated; maybe the mirror was a liar (i know it didn't lie). an elephant with too-thick eyeliner and a too-thick body stared back at me and i bit through the skin of my lip till it bled and i wanted to live on some other planet where elephants were appreciated.

"that's the best one you've tried on yet," someone said, but i couldn't hear them over the red-eyed demon within me which whispered of shoving ******* down the trachea, messy but quick, everything gone in an instant. if this was my best one, i was doomed because my eyes were glazed over with the misunderstanding that beauty would never apply to me.

"i'm just gonna go- go to the restroom-" and the red eyed thing inside me cracks its whip, takes over the nerves in my brain, makes my legs sprint to the toilets and it's over, it's done, the food gone among stomach acid, falling hair, and teeth erosion.

i can only imagine what the restaurant worker who was forced to clean rainbow-coloured ***** in the toilet thought.

my bones are twisted. the
skeleton cracked at year thirteen
with what could only
be age or agony-
probably a gnarled collaboration
of the two.

i think i've been twenty-one
since i was born; at least, that's
what every teacher i've ever had
thought of me: "mature for her age".
so did every ****** guy high off of
green smoke with eyes glazed over in

lust, either staring at me or straight
through my jeans, whistling and howling
like wolves with blood dripping
down their chins and claws
ready to ****** something already

gone.

i think that's why i died young.