sometimes I think I’m just a mess of badly drawn lines. I’m just scrawled veins beneath paper rough skin, I wear poorly sketched scars on my thighs [skin deep red pen lines] and even my smile is lop-sided- but he never seemed to notice.
    
my skin [spread like thick icing over my skeleton] is a monotonous pattern of pores, a stretch of the world the sun never kissed. I can’t see the beauty in multitudes of freckles and chipped fingernails- but he does.

‘why do you love me?’

‘you make me happy.’

I never could figure out just how. was it my illegible love notes, or the tiny hearts I drew into his bare back with my fingertips? was it the filth on my knees or the way I named every bowing flower in my garden? maybe it was the way I sewed the stars to the navy sky and told him in a little, little voice-that  I loved him.

either way he made my heart skip beats and bumps and bangs and he made me feel beautiful, a little thing I am most certainly not.

‘you are beautiful.’

oh he was such a lovely liar. he would lie about pretty things like my long eyelashes and my sugary breath in his ear and he would lie about loving me. pretty boys don’t love ugly girls, no no, never, not even on the television.

so I’d just cry into his shoulder and inhale him like he was a sample of expensive, designer perfume. one day he saw my eyes overflowing and all he could say was
‘oh, you look so pretty when you cry.’

I’m not pretty, I’m not pretty, I’m not pretty.

I waited for goodbye, I waited for it like you wait for nighttime to come and steal away the daylight, I thought it wouldn’t hurt.

then it did.

it was a pneumonic hurt, that lived in my lungs and hid my breathing under sobbing and loud lyrics. it was a hurt that began in my toes and shattered three ribs to get to breaking my heart. it was a hurt that screamed in my ears:

pretty boys break hearts.

i carved it in my leg- just so i wouldn't forget.