Bloody Lips

Different.

It's the label we have.

Different.

Is that so bad?

Society replies without hesitation,

Why be unique?

If you're in isolation?

No one will love you if you're a freak.

Our heads are simply prisons we will never escape.

Sure, sticks and stones, maybe.

But, oh, how do run from those words engraved in your mind?

The type of talk that tears at our insides.

The opinions that slip from their bloody lips

about our faces, or clothes, or fat hips

pushing us to recklessly alter our outsides

or even to take our own lives.

"You're ugly."

They say effortlessly.

Yet every morning we spend hours in the bathroom

trying to cover the pointed-out flaws we believe to be true.

But don't you see?

Our makeup never covers our insecurity.

And sometimes we try something new

like biting off less than we can chew

or we purge to stop the gain

but none of it seems to end the pain

and when we look into the mirror

we fight the urge to scream at what appears

and do you know what we see?

A fabricated image that drives us into insanity.

And at this point we go to the extremes

of even having plastic surgery

because we feel we'll never be satisfied with ourselves

and all we want is to look like someone else.

Do they know what they do?

With those careless words they spew?

It's pretty scary,

how influential words can be.

Maybe, first, we should think it all through.

Maybe the words were never true.

Maybe we aren't the ones that are

ugly.

Maybe, all along, it was merely

Society.