Costly Exteriors

I respect your weaknesses
Because I am but glass
Vulnerability is reality
The past is the past

Don't let my needs hold you
I know you have a truth to tell
Sensitivity is a handicap
Let out your bell, and yell

Don't display less than confidence
Less than you is fruitless
Don't feed me with my hopes
I fell for your naturalness

There are no facades that lock me
Dig up broken shards
Place them on a pedestal
I love you 'cause you're scarred

I Can Hear Your Smile

I can hear your smile
Lift above the crowd
Mingle in the rafters
An effervescent cloud

Though I had my back turned
It hit between the ears
Embedded in my memory
Played over year to year

When I turn around
It will just get louder
Pressing on my abdomen
And growing ever prouder


It will make me sick with lust
My eyes will fish for yours
Connect with me and there we are
Liberated by closed doors

My "first love"

Our time is over, our love is a memory. A sweet memory, filled with the aroma of your black hair and the cologne I put on especially for you, as distant to me as the summer nights that housed them.

Critics will say that this was merely my "first love." I will be expected to move on quickly, after an "understandable" bout with depression. It will be my duty to be blase about our time together. My duty to remember the sour finish and not the nectar of the first touch. Every kind word, all of the the prolonged glances, the sweaty hands held too tight, will be memories. Memories that are expected to fade with time. Moments in time, once being remembered for safe keeping, will no longer reach the ears of our nonexistent family tree, never planted.

But, how can I smother and stuff all of these emotional recounts away into the category of "first love." When I love, is it not for a life time? Or was I not loving quite hard enough?

No. No, damn it all. My love is real love. My love was taught to me through sturdy grandparents, brought to fruitation through intellect that matched my own, and a wit to surpass me.

My love is sturdy foundation, meant to build upon itself the feeling of acceptance and a mutual respect.

This wasn't my love, though, it was OURS.

I planted the bud, and you watered it. We stood and watched it bloom together.

Who decides what love last?

Ours was just as solid as those I witness at the alter, and we just as scared.

Out union wasn't nasty, at least not more that love should be.

Our love didn't boast, at least not louder than the others.

The lips of our love sang a melody that we danced the harmony too, all into the haze of a Mississippi night.

I was always uncertain, even if you, with out fail, stepped onto the ledge with me. Uncertainty must be a key ingredient in love, for with out it our souls grow into comfort and contempt.

Yet still, with all the unforeboding and ambiguous plans, we aren't loving any more.

My first love.

Aching for Validation

I have often felt that I was the best at something, that I was better than others at the fine arts or perhaps swam faster...or that I had the broadest thoughts.

There have been times in my life where I knew, with out a thread of doubt, that I was born for greatness.

But consistently, with an unfailing persistence that surely is possessed solely by God himself, the grim feeling of worthlessness will grow in me.

This feeling is brought on by myself, but projected through a mirror and is not merely limited to the feminine.

Boundless, this feeling seeps through us all. It grows in business men, it prospers in the powerful, especially in the beautiful.

The feeling is mental, the repercussions, physical.

It's a feeling that is materialized in a drunken haze and ruins our perception of what is reality.

My biggest enemy in my life is the facade of the mirror. It's depictions are reality, but through my eyes the image is twisted. My brain processes my body and then shows me what I thought I would see all along. By the time it reaches the home of my self-esteem, my heart, it is a different picture all together.

I am fat.

Whether it is the truth or not, it will ALWAYS be what I see.

Body image is a war of emotions, fought between self-worth and emptiness.

It is a futile battle. There is no clear winner in the war between a spirit and a body. The image that we have our sights on is seemingly unattainable, mostly because it probably is.

This society looks in mirrors, not to see themselves, but in a hope to see Seventeen Magazine, in a desperation to see Vogue.

Inner beauty is pushed aside and labeled as valueless, while we all strive toward a superficial mediocrity that will only lead us to pining for reassurance, aching for validation.

The tears that I cry are cried by everyone at some point. And once that is understood, there is a a weapon added to the fight. An alliance of the self-inflicted sufferers, power in numbers.