Shell of A Girl

Trigger Warning: mention of disordered eating

My body is made of paper thin porcelain, ready to be crushed by the moving wind. 

I try to silence my mind in many ways, bringing it back down to the speed of the world around me and down from floating above the clouds. 

I restrict my memories, my thinking patterns, my food intake, my thoughts of existence.

This bell jar specimen is pinned down for observation, but pining to break free. 

My earthly body is subject to too many contradictions to hold my full sense of self. 

I am young, my body feels heavy and old. 

I could be called conventionally pretty, my mind can be quite an ugly place.

I am loving, my environment and my psyche is unforgiving. 

My earthly body is too fragile to reside within for long periods of time. I much prefer the celestial bodies feeding my imagination meringue drops-- so sweet. 

Each daydream allows me to see the fruitful possibilities in this world.

How I may one day pull back the curtains to let the light in.

An Anthropology of Who Am I?

My past selves are fragments stuck in glass shadow boxes,

Each one a little individual vignette who I recognize but somehow irreparably am not.

These girls are in various stages of life that I feel a duty to protect, yet they are not me…

Sisters of the same body trapped in the resin of unfortunate moments.

I don’t know how to comfort these strangers,

Resolve their issues and stitch them into a quilt of my many identities?

I don’t know who is who or how they relate to me

—In the whole sense of being—

But I know they are part of my journey.

Little pieces caught in time’s web across many different destinies.