fragility

in conversation with someone

comfortable, she is able to

show her true colors, still  

each eye bears an iris full of

years of torment & the therapy that

followed---

these very same eyes

like little cameras buried in her young

innocent face,

which had been pushed to the wall

as a little girl & forced to do things

that she blocked out then

but which soon grew so loud

they screamed inside her head

enough to blow her eardrums out

from within,

recording hundreds, thousands of

execrable images that  

flooded the levees &

bore terrors down upon her very heart

that tried to survive amidst the

self-hatred that resulted,

pulling with it an undeserved feeling

that she would never be clean again,

that no one would ever love her.

 

struggling with “trust” is an

understatement, for what’s been done has

been done & even though people insist

that she’s attractive, she has

fought the urge to make herself throw

up, fought the urge to binge, fought the

urge to slice at herself---all attempts

to quench the destructive impulse that

no one else can understand,

pulsating inside

&

every day her strength increases is

every day she wins the fight against

herself, in complete paradox.