What I wouldn’t say out loud;
At a dinner party, when the conversation turns to
matters of personal identity and the such.
That I live in a country where
self-confidence is in the very water alongside Chlorine
And possibly many pissed out Pharmacuticals
I don’t know how they import it or how they bottled it
in the first place
but everyone takes a long swig
and grows up self-important and rarely doubting
their worth
A la the internalized cheerleader
I must therefore hail
from an island of thorns
because I didn’t get inoculated against
the sumptuous barbs
my skin punctures at the slightest retort
I bled easily even after I cauterized the wound.
Necessarily, this has caused some
discomfort
people don’t get how
someone can hate themselves
be a painted sin eater
for all insult
until that gobstopper of internalized anguish
turns on them and it feels like
it’s always been about hating the self
Such a natural elegant process of self harm
looking back in the mirror
wishing she could erase
the very DNA, the very face of her.
Now I have a second sight
for bullshit and fakes
and often I’m told; Give me a chance you never know!
But O I do
and I stay away from the saturating crowd
as they live their camera-ready lives
to the fizz and hiss of the insta-bulb
wondering if I will ever
feel differently or if this
deep phlegmy cough
will inhabit my very soul and become
a new lingua of self loathing.
Sometimes I see girls who
could have been me, but grew up
in a different world where
presumably they were inoculated against
self-hate at an early age and given a healthy dose
of worth and manifest ego
they seem like an identical twin who
was raised on grass instead of hay
in the sun instead of snow
and even though they still possess
the abhorant figure of myself
with her squinting mash of ancestral sabotage
I find I like aspects of them
as they flourish weed-like
unawares
there is a shadow
watching them
wondering
if I had grown up just like them
and taken my Happy Pills along with my self deception
what would I have gained?
What would I have lost?
I might resemble them but
I suspect, I would be nothing like them
except in the cracked glass of us
broken and repaired many times
until they can stand no more
to hold
water
Lie in bed
What you don’t know, can’t know, won’t know