kaleidoscope

I was four years old

when I came alive

for the first time

breathing fresh out the womb

I was five when I discovered

my first favorite song ever

it was

“bad day”

by daniel powter

and I laughed every time

I heard it

on the radio

I was six when I learned

I wasn’t brave enough

or strong enough

to enjoy rock climbing

on those tall plastic walls

hanging onto those

brightly colored hand bars

carved into stone

wasn’t fun at all

for me

I was seven when I realized

somehow

someway

I was a human being

I was alive

and that my life

beyond the school days

and the blur of my thoughts

and the recurring

of the Spongebob theme song

was also

such a strange little miracle

I was eight when I realized

there was more

I wasn’t just human

and never would be

I was a girl

in the world

with thoughts and feelings

with intelligence

and talents

and a brain someplace

perhaps sometimes

hidden away

I was nine when I thought

for the very first time

is it because I’m a girl?

I was ten when

the embarrassment

of loving what I love

hit me

like a bullet

I was eleven when Grandma died

and I started to store

a knife away

in the corner of the basement

I can’t tell you why

I was twelve when I realized

how much I hated my body

a body that throbbed and ached

with the force

of my own cruelty

towards it

I was thirteen

when I was assaulted

for the first time

and everything

changed

somehow

my thoughts and feelings

seemed to halt in their tracks

and I became my aching

throbbing

ugly

fucking

body

and nothing more

I was fourteen when I started to see

how other men looked at me

and I couldn’t understand why

they didn’t find me more disgusting

selfishly

cruelly

I wanted them to look

at someone else

sometimes they did

but when they didn’t

I resented

not them

not yet

but myself

I was fifteen

instead

when I started hating them

men

monsters

demons

those who had been

my friends

in my youth

my family

were now abstracted

in the mind

made into

fucking

pig people

dangers

and my heart burned

inside the orifice

of my heaving chest

bound tight

stowed away

by my own resentment

I was sixteen

when I wore a tank top

to school

for the first time

I was seventeen

when I broke

and shattered

into a million pieces

and picked myself up

shard by shard

with others by my side

helping me carry on

even though everything

is different

lifeless

glazed over

as I stood strung tight

within a prison

of my own creation

lies and tears

worlds apart

forced to move

and made to fuck

is how I felt

I was eighteen when I graduated

high school

in the midst of covid

I was okay by then

I could breathe again

fresh air

heaving flesh

straight out the womb

once again

I was nineteen when I asked myself

why did I hate pink so much

in second grade?

it isn’t my favorite color

but it wasn’t so bad

I was twenty

when I started starving

myself

again

it worked

for a while

it’s funny to be malnourished

and still fucking fat

not funny, at all

but strange and ironic

like doing it all

is not doing enough

or anything

at all

because really

who am I if not my aching

throbbing

(screaming)

fat

(hurting)

whore

body?

tell me, please

what to do

and how to be

I am woman

and woman is built

for beauty

and observance

for the looking

and the taking

I was twenty-one

when I realized

maybe

this isn’t all

I am

I was twenty-two

when I realized

the weight of the

damage

done

to myself

by myself

I am twenty-three

and free now

free from the shackles

of heavy expectations

freer than I’ve been

since I was young

humming along

to my very first

favorite song

you had a bad day

for I have

and I did

and I will

but it’s over

for now