you can romanticize all you wish, to feel
that death is romantic, but that doesn’t make it real
you can write poems of beautiful broken girls
drawing perfect crimson lines on their arms as their hand curls
around the knife they stole from the kitchen, sharp, clean, the gorgeous sadness
that comes with this kind of poetic madness
but the truth is far from this lie
it’s not wanting to eat, trying not to cry
in front of your class because you just can’t do it anymore
the lines on my skin were not drawn but carved, for
my illness is not beautiful, it destroys me
and the ones who try to set me free
from the worries and wounds of my heart
yet it all plays a part
in the wish to gouge out my eyes
or punch until my knuckles bleed, but the lies
i tell only help the ones who pretend that it’s wonderful
and aren’t for a second doubtful
that mabye wishing you could run away from yourself
and instead place their sculpted depression on a bookshelf
so they can pretend that what tears us apart is actually beautiful and we
just need to see it for ourselves, that i, me,
am a hidden gem, under all
those tears and bitter words that fall,
under the scars i’ve so carefully ripped through my skin
past the screaming and yelling, past wishing this was fin
past the way i am slowly deteriorating, past
the way i don’t know if i’ll make it another year and wishing death would come fast
past the part of me that wishes to never get better
because this is so beautiful, the way i fester
and rot in my bed, the way i’ll tell the ones i love i hate them
because i’d rather be miserable and alone than try and put up the act of being a gem
you can pretend the way they fall from the sky
is almost like angels who wish to fly
but they aren’t, they’re just people who are horrified,
who are terrified, mortified
of the horror of this world, there is nothing
that they could think of but to hurt themselves; burning, pricking, cutting
and eventually they learned to fly
like the angels they never were, it was a lie
that there was something better after this
but then it all fits
together; there was nothing ever beautiful about this
about the hits
that we took from the world
as broken and bitter and dead as the leaves that furl
into themselves when the fall comes.
the boy was starving himself, because he was terrified to be made fun of.
the girl who cut needed some sort of control in her life.
the person who screams and yells has been choked with anger ever since they can remember
the man who can never predict his emotions has been struggling since he was a boy.
the woman who always counts her calories and can always be found in the gym was always told she was fat.
the person who reads the sad poems and books wants to know they’re not alone, because even in a room full of people they don’t feel seen.
but that’s beautiful. romantic, gorgeous, perfect.
i can’t say anything after all, i’m just a dumb kid.
(who’s actually dealt with this stuff)