Under the gaze of a perpetual cimmerian night 

Bullets blazing, raging 

Back and forth 

Across a vast expanse of devastation

Explosions rendering arid earth from existence

Screams muted into silence

From mouths spewing spit just as vehemently as fragments from exploding shrapnel

Crumbling under the gravity of despair

Heaving gun powder amid ghastly winds

Tasting death on the tip of the tongue

Seeing death through eyes 

Glazed with ballistic glass

A battlefield

What if my body is this battlefield?

 

It's me against me against the world 

Dear world, I can't stand up to your insurmountable beauty standards

A bar far out of sight, 

but never out of mind

You've stained my soul in a scarlet red not good enough

 

You see,

Thick skin isn't bullet proof

Every reminder that I'm too this too that, too much of me and not enough of you, leaves bullet holes where love should be

 

Did you know

That a mirror is a weapon of mass destruction 

How easily a mirror can peel back your skin

turn you inside out

Expose your scars,

Puncture Your Purple Heart 

Leave you lost dog tag and ghost 

Or nothing

 

One of the worst things the world can do to a person is not to hurt them with "ugly"

But to inspire friendly fire,

To imprison you in your own skeleton 

Turn your body into scorched earth and minefield

make you believe that the only way out is down

About six feet under

 

Weary of being the prisoner of a war I did not start,

I asked myself

What am I fighting for

As if I wasn’t fighting for myself

As if fighting for myself wasn’t love

And isn’t self love beautiful?

It was then I learned that in even in the midst of a warring battlefield 

flowers could grow

I saw one 

and then I planted some more

 

Dear world, you say that I am ugly

And you know what, you’re right

But I am only ugly if I am looking through your eyes 

And I refuse to any longer 

God has blessed me with two of my own

And Darius, I apologize for taking so long to use them to 

see you, to see me