Words.

This Is Who She Is

She looks in the same mirror every morning. Yes that mirror that stays dirty because she doesn't feel like cleaning it anymore. Yes that mirror that has looked back at her and laughed while she cried.

That broken heart trapped in her chest hasn't died.

She looks and she sees the damage that age has done and yet she's still so young and so hopeful that her future has just begun.

She sees these dark eyes rimmed red from crying and lines on her face from when she couldn't stop smiling and slumped shoulders from when God never stopped piling the stress, and she hasn't even gotten dressed yet.

She hasn't put on her makeup yet. She hasn't covered her shame and she hasn't tamed that demon on her head she dares call hair. For another 5 minutes, she doesn't care.

Because this is who she is.

She's a mess on Mondays and by Friday she's tired and you can really see it as you ask her how she is. She'll always answer with "good".

But she's far from it. She's so far from good it's almost like a joke to herself. As she stands and stretches to put a book back on the shelf you can see the stress her body has gone through.

Her shoulders tense and there's an unbelievable pain she feels but she'll never tell you that because she thinks it'll pass but, in reality, it will always remain.

Her back arches and cracks beneath her skin and for a moment you can almost see the pain she's in. But she'll never complain.

She'll never tell you how she use to be because this is who she is.

She'll never tell you how hard she cried or how frequently she did because most of her life has been hit and miss.

She'll never tell you about how the scheduled pain her chest feels when she thinks about all that has been taken from her because she knows she deserves nothing more.

Because this is who she is.

She's broken and she's beaten and she's horribly flawed and she always finds a way to miss someone who shouldn't be missed.

But this is who she is.

She taught herself to believe even though you told her that her dreams will never be achieved because of the person she'll soon be.

She didn't believe you because this is who she is.

She learned what love was on her own. She now sits upon her own throne and can never be overthrown because she realizes that she's alone so she has nothing to lose, nothing to bid on but herself.

She fits in with the common wealth.

And she doesn't care about her health.

She doesn't care about herself.

She doesn't want to be one of Santa's little elves making plastic toys and shoving them on a broken shelf.

But she knows how to help.

She knows how to stop demons inside her head that tell her she's better off dead but she doesn't have enough energy to stop.

Sometimes she's on top of the world and she swears she's a good girl but at the same time she's one of those demons.

She's that shoulder that's always there to lean on.

She's got the will to keep on.

Because this is who she is.

But she wasn't always like this. Hard lines of her body that define her use to be soft and silky.

She never knew that this was who she will be.

She use to talk quietly and speak politely so she wouldn't rouse the anger that was asleep in the frontal lobe of her subconscious.

Now she speaks loudly and with authority that's been hiding for centuries.

This is who she is now and this is who she'll be.

This is who she is and this is who she sees.

This is who you've made her become and this is what you see. A hard, rigid, woman behind a locked door without a key.

This is what you've done to her. Can't you see that she'll be missed.

I guess not.

Because this is who she is.