Unworthy

I walked and everything came unraveling
My heart buckets of water flooding up
Earth spotted throat
Niagara falls
Descending
My life
Existence
And always
Beneath it
This control of my body
Limbs extending tall
11 years old always looming
just when I thought I didn’t care
anymore about what you did
just when i thought i had forgotten
how family can descend into hell
oh heavens loose
lose yourself inside my head
while i run up this hill
wiping
water
from my cheeks
magnolia scented feet
petaled out
for all to see
what is wrong with this girl
woman-child
walking down a path
that seemed all right
on that side of the mississipi
but the river had two banks
and so i sweep my charcoal burned bangs
away from the cloudy eyes
I walked and everything came unraveling
The faster I walked, the faster the tear drops
concrete dreams
alibis
humming birds
magnolias
this was not it
it wasn’t me
it wasn’t me
who was scared
that time at the dinner table
when i was told not to eat too many potatoes
it wasn’t me
it was him
who was scared
of my body
turning
its angular carrot shaped limbs
into cinnamon apple
no sticks
it was him
who feared
the roundness of my shapes
the wholeness of my faith
the truth
that lies beneath
the walks i take
the meals i break
the flow
of
my
life.

i wept for myself tonight.
for all the fear I took on that wasn’t mine to take on
all the hours of wanting another body
so badly.

this poem is broken
but then again
so was I.

Flick flock
you and I
we’ll piece it all away
and tie it in a pretty bow
for all to see.

so many years of self hatred.
it wasn’t worth it.