Floor Length Mirror

In my room on a white door

There is a floor length mirror

I stand and stare for hours

Looking at its reflections

Looking at my reflection in the glass

I see my blemishes my flaws

My weight my skin my bones

I see the scars that I have bled for

My mind and my body another tally

taken

By the man above below inside of me

In middle school I was always skinny boy

Anorexic and pathetic

They told me I need help and therapy

Well sometimes the pills are a lie

They write you biography on prescription pads

I won’t accept another Prozac morning

They tell you all the side effects

Except the inner chaos

I’m not depressed

I have a floor length mirror and a scale in the bathroom 

That promise me other wise

The pain is seductive beautiful and tragic

I stare upon the skin that I have marred

At the pain I bring to someone else

Because I am not myself I’m an observer in the body of a wanderer

A scientist who experiments on himself

Sorry I’m not considered obese

Sorry I can not believe

Don’t tell me these problems

Are insignificant

The quiter you hear them

Doesn’t make them less important

I could scream loud from my skin

Project the pain into the open

I pray for a cave to provide a single echo

This poem is an echo of the things that I have said and felt and heard

Is a chorus of a thousand bleeding lines

Going to be big enough

If I line my arms and mind with these scars

Can I finally be considered someone who hurts like anyone else 

Am I not a human with pain and suffering

Are we not all people in pain and suffering 

Newflash for you

I’m homosapien

We’re siblings in arms against

A standard of nofmalcy 

No matter your skin

Or your notoriety

I don’t need to rhyme

to tell you I’m important

It’s not as simple

As I’m fine or I’m broken

I’m cracked and I’m torn

I’m the doll of 7 year old girl

Ive been through the washer and fought the war

Against my own skin

Against the whole world

This poem is long

As are the turbulent seas

Those who don’t have a boat to cross them

Or another human to tell them they matter

So many girls and boys stand at that shore

Who want to feel normal

As they starve and vomit

To try to relate

To understand what skinny is even if their size 0

Your waist could be 20 inches or 45 for that

But it really doesnt matter

That’s not what counts

We can not define someone on numbers

They don’t represent the person who lives them

So why do we continue to label anyone

They tell you beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Well then isn’t ugliness

Everyone should feel pretty

But they get to decide

It isn’t up for debate

And its not your place to them to lose weight or eat more

We let people shame us for too many things

We must stand together and stop the bullying

It isn’t healthy to starve or throw up

But it isn’t helping to push and poke them on a journey to recovery

You must first love yourself as you see it

And a there is nothing better than a lighthouse at that far away shore to guide you

So be a friend

Love them how they are

But don’t pretend to care

Because they may die from how they eat or dont

You don’t realize the trauma until it is you

For those who do

Save them from the world we know

Protect them from the insults and jealously that is adolescence

Be there shelter from the bombs that collide with their minds

And raise them above the people who dig at them trying to put them 6 feet under

Don’t tell someone who starved 

that they are pretty and perfect in the standards of society

Don’t tell someone who is overweight

that they should diet and try to save themselves

Don’t body shame

Don’t body shape

don’t body sculpt

Someone else Because it’s their clay to mold

And its their body to love

I was never perfect to the standards

And that should be ok

I have a floor length mirror

Hung in my room

I see my body in it’s entirety

But the question is if you do