and she told me
well when I was little
they pulled my hair and called me names,
etching my failure into my forehead
branding me with their teasing laughter
“fat girls cant be pretty”
they called
so she learned how to stick her finger down her throat
and throw back up her
peanut butter and jelly sandwich with
cherry flavoured Capri sun
maybe if im skinnier
they’ll stop calling me names
she thought
but she earned a new one
she was eight

and when she was fourteen
she fell in love with a boy with chocolate skin and
long brown eyelashes and he was the
sun moon stars and all the constellations in that
darkly beautiful mind of hers and when he
ripped off the bandaids he’d so gently sewed up her heart with
the mountains shook with the
impact of her tears
she cried him icy lakes and
broke into valleys
littered with deep ravines
and she delved deep within herself
constructing a veritable fortress around her heart

she kept her sleeves pulled down
because she bore her
pain on her wrists and I watched her
roll up into a ball and shake
because sometimes she got so sad
she couldn’t handle being human any longer
and I tried to love her out of her shell
and far away from tall buildings but she
told me she was too far gone
and her only savior was the boy
with his hands on another girl