i. don't even speak of redemption dear--
i'm cased in secrets and silence and fear
(because) the mirror is lying to me, they
say but it feels like the truth and i don't know
who's right and anyway, i never have
the strength it takes to put up a fight.

ii. so the darkness is stripping me of my dreamer
girl(-boy) viewpoint, fractured pink glasses and pixie
dust that didn't do shit and Disney screaming at me
that it was all just lies, it was always just lies:
you never should have listened & i'm (so) sorry
i broke you.

iii. &pull the trigger, in the bathroom stall. flush away
the ugliness 'n wish away reality because the words, they're
never good enough & the numbers on the scale are never
low enough, never even close, not very much. so i'm bleeding
raw-cliché agony from the scars around my wrist, open (yet)
again like the decay of innocence when the
stigma knocks him breathless, twisted out
&screaming: i'm n-n-not that different.

iv. but confusion is coursing slick through my veins
and i'll (try to) drown the anguish with alcohol & pills, inking down
my arms with suicide & shame until i paint my fingernails
black like a stereotype and a reminder that in the end, i am
nothing & no one; not that i can even pretend.

v. (&love:) it shouldn't be such a star-shot miracle.