-Good Morning, Stranger-

-Expectations Wearing Through My Skin-

You sit with yourself as a palate cleanser of a person,

A depression so refreshing left in your wake,

But darling, don't you understand,

In every other sense you're just some stupid mistake.

A canvas torn to be left untouched,

Used instead as a scathingly scarred cheap paint pallet because they thought it such a pity that you'd just up and break.

Their words weave uncertainty into all that you see,

Lines creased and pulled tight against your face as you wonder what you're even doing still in this place.

It's a birthday of a person they don't even see,

A birthday of someone who certainly doesn't seem quite like me.

But that's fine.

I'm fine.

And I don't care that you don't understand my gender,

Because I don't want to be understood if it just means you're gonna hurt me better.

But deep down I think I'd really rather just be a more broken, beaten me,

Than whoever the hell you'd prefer to see.

But these boring old faces are boring into my sinful skin and all that is me,

I am judged unconditionally for my unforgivingly endless commodity of oddity and humanity.

They judge it like vice and what ought to be good.

Like I can only be nice at being a freak or be loved because I just shut up and act as I should.

Just like dirt stains,

Spread onto bloodied pink socks tell me to do.

Like languishing written scriptures of my deadnames,

Brushed over with callous fingertips as I stare silently and compliantly at you.

Told to let myself be hurt to be healed by invisible raked honor fraudulent against my roughened skin,

Worms wriggling in a symphony,

As they all outcry ambling impudent writhing within,

Struggling to open my eyes and avert them from your bloodied hands wondering where I'd see some inkling sense of mercy.

I am told to accept the smell of dripping molten metal and raw blood,

As the rasp in my dying weary draining breath shrieks I shall.

Just like these wavering worn legs dipped delicate into boiling lacings of lakeside mud,

Tell me falling frail into a bow,

As I look up and realize this is all I'm meant to be now.

Tilted up to expose my neck as I check tapestries depicting my former odysseys that terrify my single lone shivering form.

I just wanted to be happy,

Just wanted to feel good when you touch my face and your hands feel slightly warm.

A feeling like no other where I might goad a portion of pried glee.

A welcome version of myself,

That's actually me.

I try taking bottled bliss from people I could kiss from the top of my shelf,

But you had expectations I can't meet,

As I face this sinking shattering feeling of a loss I can't defeat.

A threat I can't outrun,

Thrown by my side into the curbside.

I tell myself about those I love and all the family that I won,

But these things that I care for are things that I hide.

So I shake my head and breathe on bated breath from my box inside.

I'll bury myself bleeding before bearing onto the backs of my friends,

So I'm running out of places to hide.

I'll kill the switch in my ears that hears the call before I respond because I really don't wanna hear what he has to say again,

And I'm running out of reasons to hide.

And I'm really not sure why I still feel so prompted to lay back into your arms and confide,

In the endlessly inescapable fact that I'm running out of time.

The person I once thought I was is running out of time.

And I really don't mind.

And I really don't mind.

And I really don't mind.

-end-