Superficial Suffering?

50 6 0
                                    

Cleanliness and alabaster skin
wash down the sink drain,
tinted rosy pink with blood,
A lesson in art.

pain is not real unless it
is visible to the world.
I wear mine on my wrist
to showcase it well.

the scars left behind are
like trophies:
the bigger they are,
the more real my story is.

superficial lines leaving tiny,
feathered scratches will not
make the cut in a world as
tenacious as this.

deep and hard, I dig for
the truth that must lie
underneath my banana peel
legs that are bruised from age

I wonder if the word
"ugly" will scar in the
same way, as if it were branded
into my ever-growing stomach

an allergy to bandaids
Stops me from true
healing, especially when I am so
known to remove the scabs.

cannot be cured too quickly, afterall,
or else the emptiness felt in my
own body, the desire I tried to share,
was just a hoax

one left behind by the disfigured
monsters tramping around in my
battered brain, each starting war
over who shone brightest that day.

my body is a battlefield, littered
with the tongues of those with personal agenda, blood will never
wash out of this earth.

a masacre so vast that
even the soldiers weep at
the sight of this pockmarked land,
the very one they fight on daily.

I will never again be told that my suffering is superficial.

I Was Once a Sunflower Where stories live. Discover now