This body was made mine in the first trimester.

By the 18th year it was marked worse than that of a woman owned by a pimp.

Each scar a declaration: I claimed this long ago.

Each scar a battle wound: a reminder of wars waged.

Demons within have tried to annihilate a back alley angel,

as if a god could ever be tried and hanged by the thorns of its own humanity.

Each fight pounds away at my feather frame:

they carved off what they could of my flesh.

Havoc and bloodshed ensures that the world will quake-

registers a 8.9 on the Richter and a 2.1 on the GPA.

Ten minutes going on an hour.

They are trying to break me, shake me until I fall apart, until I am put away into a white room,

but an entity can only settle into itself for so long

before stillness returns.

The fault lines may fissure along the forearms, the thighs, and the hips,

but my fractures will be filled like the crocodile cracked roads I walk.

There is no time for an ending-

an angel with clipped wings never forgets how to soar.

The heavy sadness drains with the senseless tears.

This body, my strong and powerful form, flushes out that which hurts.

My brain once stained by the blues is repainted red.

cranium full of cockroaches to be terminated,

and I am always on my way.

My life is not an exercise in futility

and I will be forever fierce.

I am a process,

eternally forging myself into existence.

There is no shame in being a steel seraph of this age-

where blades are cheap and loneliness is lethal,

my soul remains priceless-

my words a battle cry.

I have fought the evil within myself and emerged victorious

because for the goriest of the godliest to return from hell,

the rotten and foul must be excised.

As my own divinity I vowed to kill my evil

in order to be gloriously alive

flawlessly pure, forever more.

A perfect warrior.