Poesie

You told me you wouldn’t walk outside with me if I went looking the way I did. Called me sensitive for crying. I poured into my Strawberry Shortcake spiral notebook, rhyming words.

I couldn’t find a place with my friends or at home: frizzy hair, baggy t-shirts, preference for books, never able to get it right. I scribbled into a white and pale blue hardcover book.

When I cleaned out my drawers, I sat on my bed reading page after page: how I didn’t like myself, didn’t know how to be a person people could like, didn’t want to exist.

The rhyming ruined it. I threw all my notebooks away.

But.

It is in my fingertips when I trace them down someone’s back, up their belly to their chest. Tumbling out my mouth before I push my lips against someone’s skin. In the silver strands snaking through my frizzy hair.