I am growing faster than the grass
that covers our front lawn and somehow
I only need more affection.

I am often in tears after 4 pm.
I stay in my room wishing for things.

You might throw a question my way,
do not be offended when I stumble down
the dark hallway.

Do not be alarmed when I wear the same shirt for 3 days
and do not tell me I am beautiful.

Listen to me when I tell you I am not in the right body.
My whole life no one has believed me.

I only wanted to be perceived as worthless for three years,
I don’t know how you overcome that.

I don’t know how I’m still alive.
A lot of times I see myself as invincible.

How I wish I was not.
I get tired when the sun comes up,
and when it goes down.

I will die in less than ten years,
so all that I have strived for will be for nothing.
I will die in nine years and one month.

I know why my caged soul sings.
I’ve been digging my grave since birth.

I was born backwards,
racing towards something over the horizon.

I cry in the morning.
I hold myself a lot.

Some days I wake up blind.
Some days I want to carve my poetry into my veins.

I wish I was never born
and I wish you died in a fire.
I wish you never moved here from Chicago.

At 14 I cracked the veil and I went crazy.
I think there’s something wrong with me.

I think there’s something WRONG WITH ME.
I told you my secret
and you called me insane.

I wish you drowned in a bathtub as a child
I wish you had ugly eyes
I wish you got hit by a car
I wish I shot you in the head
I wish I shot you dead
I’m a sick girl
My head is coughing

My heart has a virus the doctors have no cure for
They stand over me with medicine
That I already know will not help me
I think there are worms in my intestines
I think my skin is rotting
My blood is turning to sewage

Do I smell yet?
I think I belong in a hospital

I was an infant sounding out
vowels on labels fixated with
complexions not hearts.
Sermons spoken spilled salt

on wounds shaped from moments
when the sword was mightier than the pen.
I was mute as black blood
streamed letters the mature read

and dismissed as chicken scratch.
Pleas to unlock the chains noosed
around my heart, never heard,
until my ears opened to self acceptance—

the song hearts dance to without shame,
the vernacular spoken without stutter.
The key frees my soul from shackles
and dissolves the branded lesions borne.

They were just words.

Hello darling
Do you remember me?
The boy you left standing in the rain
While you went off and started your life
Remember me now?
The boy you left with his thoughts
While you spread your wings and soared into the light
Remember me yet?
The boy you left with feet swinging in the wind, heart filled with regret
Now you remember and it’s too late, for now you see that I have left
Farewell my darling, I hope your heart does not weep for me yet

He said:
"let's pretend you don't come in waves of blue hair and mystery."  

Lets take these shots so you can be a bad girl for me.
And I stood there toeing a half empty beer can
with my beat up boots thinking
"what the **** dude?"

He said I want to get to know you,
I want to see if what they say is true.
I look up through the smoke and the lights and the crowd
and tell you "It is".

And this excites him. "Oh yeah baby I know what you are".

"What am I? I thought was nothing but a blue haired mystery, an enigma, a presence to be desired...",
and he leans in to me, his gin soaked breath in my ear:

"You love, are a ******* temptress."

So now I have been reduced to all damsel all lust all distress.
Those stupid princes never stop to wonder
if the pretty face in the tower even wants to be rescued.

Cause babe, I never asked to be saved.

Cause maybe I have built these walls to keep men like you out.
Or maybe I just wanted to have the chance to
invite you in on my own terms.

Maybe I just wanted to be able to escort you out.
This has never been my prison, this is my tower.
My legacy.

The surgeon changed her nose
To a perfect classic form
And people forgot the original
Until her twins were born.

Surgeons can reconstruct your features,
Turn Plain Janes into beauty queens,
But surgery stops mighty short
In fixing those tiny genes.