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o n e h u n d r e d t w e n t y f i v e

Regurgitated Words
Tanner Olson | Poet
Written to Speak
writtentospeak.com
Insta: @tannerjolson

Everywhere she looks she sees.
Every glance given is remembered and buried deep.
She records the track of every whisper heard behind her back.
Force fed looks and sampled smirks have spoiled rotten her self-worth.
Heart burned on the inside with a collection of calm culminated on the outside.
Her blackened heart fights to beat for what she dreams.

She dreams of smiling. A big smile that swings from cheek to cheek revealing more than just her pearly white teeth.
A smile that speaks, that screams peace.
A smile that says more than words. That shares hope and announces the taste of sweet defeat over their words of negativity.
She dreams of walking the halls of school with a stride of integrity.
She dreams of being accepted for who she wants to be.
She dreams of this life; wants nothing more than this life. But this dream life is kept on the warm side of her pillowcase.
And when she wakes she rubs both her eyes and wipes away her dreams, walking toward reality instead of chasing that dream.
That dream that is seen but never sought. Loved but never lived.
Her real life is locked behind her bedroom door.
Secrets piled to the top of her dresser drawer.
An eruption of humiliation and desperation have stained her white walls with demoralization.
Surrounded night after night by these walls and this ceiling.
Boxed in by what is and what could be.
Caved in by reality, her pillow catches her silent screams of that dream!

Each morning she wakes, her mind fills with self hate.
Convinced herself she wasn't made for this world, she begins her day.
Her mirror screams words whispered by the world that told her she wasn't
"Good enough".
"Popular enough"
"Smart enough"
"Thin enough"
"Pretty enough"

She has had enough of the "enoughs", but won't speak up to end the "enoughs".

She's been - stuffed full of destructive scowls and smirks.
Below her skin she's breaking to burst from their descriptive scripts and torturous looks.
What's buried underneath she'd kill to give you a sneak peak, BUT
What's buried underneath might kill her if she had to give you a sneak peak.

She'll flash a fake smile through her quivering lips while her eyelids work like a struggling dam to hold back the waterworks.
When asked about her day, she'll say it was fine, alright, ok. But really it was horrible, disheartening, heartbreaking, and humiliating.
Suffocating in their words she falls to their accused truths.
Well! Daddy's little girl has been verbally abused; bullied words have cut, stang, and bruised.
Hidden she fights for change in a life she didn't choose.

"Would you like a piece of cake, my Dear?" "No mother. I've eaten enough tonight. Because for dessert I'm having these two fingers served fresh on the bathroom floor. I've been saving them since I tasted them last night and I won't be able to sleep knowing this meal is living inside."
"No problem, Sweetie. Can I pick you up some more fingers from the store?"

She talked to the toilet more than she spoke to her friends.
Her lungs spoil in shock from their persistent torturous misuse.
She swims upstream in secrets while depression silently, violently pulls her under.

Chewing on words she overheard, swallowing those empty bitter bites, they spoil in a vacant, starving belly time after time.
And No matter how many times she tries her body can't digest their believable lies.

A stuffed mind pushes her to regurgitate those lies time after time.

Coughing while she cried I knelt by her side.
Shame and fear compiled in both her teary eyes, as empathy welled in mine.
"Baby, get off the ground. This floor is not where you should be found. Are you trying to find your worth in what hurts?"

"My worth? I'm worth nothing. This piggy bank of a stomach is cracked open daily and spent every night. Wrinkled dollars have been flushed away with my nickels and dimes. I've bought too many deceitful lies, swallowed the receipts only to see them drown clockwise."

"But, baby you're beautiful... you've been created wonderfully by the Creator... "

"A monster isn't created it's constructed. We look into two different mirrors every morning. When you see the sun shining, I see the rain pouring. Staring back at me, burning back at me is the furthest thing from beauty. Why is this? Why is it THIS that looks back at me? Mountains, sunsets, and flowers are beauty and you say he's created them. Well look at this creation? Where can I take this back?"
"Baby, I don't have all answers to the questions you ask, all I know is a love that will last. I know where beauty can be found even with a humiliated past. Please, Let's wash you in hope, let's dry yourself in the light. Baby, change doesn't come over night. I'm scared for you because I know that the way you live is the way you'll die and I can't watch you die to this way of life. Beauty isn't found in a mirror. It won't ever be found in a mirror. Beauty is found in who found you. And baby, He found you."
Her eyes flee from the scene, her jaw drops with her arms as she steps down as the porcelain queen.
Torn between the toilet and truth.
A whisper of their words haunts the back corner of her trampled mind.
She wants to be what she dreams!
She wants to break the chains to those lies, to that mirror, so she can chase those dreams.
To walk free unbound from their belief.
To flush hate and dive hands forward first into grace.
Buried into my chest, buried into rest, with love we will move away from this tired mess.
Arms wrapped tight we cried as she died to her way of life.
Arms wrapped tight we cried as she embraced her new way of life.
Arms wrapped tight we cried as she took a step towards her dream life.