'' Bad Days Make Good Poems ''

Without Flinching [mental health poem]

I just want to like myself.

I wish I didn't care so deeply that you liked me, too.

I wish it didn't matter how I carried myself,
Or which jewelry I picked from the shelf,
What I dressed in, what happened to be my health,
I wish a bad reaction from you wouldn't leave me so disheveled.

I stare at a glass pane on a wall.

I wish that I knew who the person staring back at me was.

I wish this kid across the sink would realize,
Maybe that he'd go beyond merely to theorize,
That he'd look in and take the in out to the lights,
Cut your hair, boy, a negative comment is not the same as to be penalized.

I've been drowning my head in the embrace of song.

I wish that I didn't need to do this just to calm the fleeting thoughts.

I wish this could just be something I do for leisure, 
Or that if my mother knew my mind as I did, it wouldn't displease her,
That I could tell you it's workings and have you still hold me dearer,
But I don't believe I'd bring myself to tell you, nor my mother either.

I want to not need to forgive myself for what brings me joy.

I wish that you need not forgive me for them either.

It is your forgiveness for them that I wish to be clenching,
As if it's so important that it holds me together like stitching,
I know this forgiveness is null and void, as there was no crime to be forgiven from the beginning,
But, god, I wish you could hold every part of me to the light without flinching.