Wishes May Come True...

Note to self.

At some point I heard you scream
And cry
And kick
And complain,

And when you turn 12,
You will learn
To be quiet
And to keep secrets
That won't escape your lips until later
In poetry you hadn't seen yourself writing.

You will get awkward stares
Holding hands with someone
Who appears to be the same gender
Isn't taken well amongst your seventeen classmates

You will beg for your hair to be cut
Short like the boys' you never loved
In the way the other girls did.

Unfortunately each snip is
Self inflicted.
And won't remove your hair, either.

At age 13 you will stand in front of
Your bathroom mirror
Staring for hours
At everything you can't bring yourself to love.

Your best friend will steal her mother's pills.
In a daze she will say, she loves you
As she holds you down underneath her.

This is the second time you learn
That it's okay to hate your body
If it doesn't belong to you.

14 meets you with
Freshman year panic attacks
Over a future only half anticipated.
A future you don't think you want to exist.

You sit in the front pew
Of a dark room, youth group.
And hear them tell the tale
Of cities destroyed over
Problems you relate to.

You have developed the skill of breathing with a dangerously compressed chest.

Soon you turn 15
And the majority of what you swallow
is your own fingers.
Everything else is flushed down the toilet, along with the blood you knew was coming, but never expected

You cry the first time you are left home alone all day,
And you dress a little less like the doctor who delivered you said you would.

You sit with strangers
In an adult's back yard,
Passing around a tiny fire
To forget about yourself
Or better yet the stranger you have become.

Between age 12 and 15,
You greet death four times.
Each time being halted by poor planning or fear.

But maybe this is a good thing.

Because I have heard you screaming
And crying
And kicking
And complaining.

I've seen you live your life
Far from quiet.

I watched as you hated yourself,
And learned how to love yourself.

I witnessed your dreams that
Proved that your body had betrayed you.

And I've witnessed all of your nightmares too.

I counted your calories
And stared down numbers
Too high and low for
Perfection.

I've sat in the margins of your
Poorly written poetry.

And if you ever forget to be kind to me  again,
You will find yourself alone.