Poem: All Others Be Damned

ALL OTHERS BE DAMNED

Scratching, and clawing

While stumbling blind

There's no anchor point

For me to find

Desperately lonely

And under this spell

A whole fucking life

Of lies I must tell

All that I am, and ever could hope to be.

I cannot contain

The shame that I feel

Or hold back the tears

That I've fought to conceal

Worthless and barren

And under a hex

Filling my holes

With drugs and sex

Succumbing to emptiness, fully consuming my soul.

How can you learn

To love yourself?

While the core of your being

Just sits on the shelf

The only trick

That I keep up my sleeve

A lockbox of makeup

And heels my reprieve

Soothing those wounds, they are gaping and can't seem to close.

This is my body

My prison, my cell

Bane of my existence

The source of my hell

All the wrong curves

And angles I hate

The face in my mirror

Will never relate

The only true hope is removing the him from my her.

Burying corpses

Of who you are

This is my burden

My wound, my scar

Coming out of my closet

It threatened to kill

My heart and my spirit

While breaking my will

Now my fraudulent costumes and armor are falling away.

No inner peace

When your held behind walls

Society puts up

As judgment befalls

My life, although easy

Was crushingly bleak

Now I risk my life

When they hear me speak

There are no more illusions to prop up the woman I am...

Just be true, and be who you are inside, all others be damned.

Mikayla Cadger