Howl

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When I was younger, my favorite poet was Sylvia Plath.

I liked her because I related when she wrote about the weight

of all the lives she wasn't living and her life under the fig tree.

 

But then someone had the audacity to tell me that she should be

admonished or abhorred just for the way that it ended ––

that a woman could not be adored,

 

only because she hurt sometimes, all the time,

every day of her life and decided to end it.

I liked that she lived as long as she did.

 

I wanted to say the things she said, words which swirled in my head

but never could find their way out the way I wanted them to;

paralyzed in fingers by poisonous stinging regrets

 

When all I ever wanted was to be beautiful and yet no one ever told me

that being beautiful never meant a damn thing in the scheme of the universe

and so I could never be satisfied being ugly and broken on the inside out

 

And the saddest moments of my life have been

when friends and lovers tried to tell me that I've been perfect all along

and I couldn't believe them.

 

If my life was a song, it would be mournful because sometimes I have to weep

and it's not because somebody doesn't love me or any petty thing

but because I am disgusted by a society

 

Where the ones who hurt and bleed get quarantined and

the ones who get the glory are all smiles and knives and people judge you 

for being crushed under the weight of the lives you're not living

 

Where those who don't understand laugh at the top of the ledge

and kick sand in the eyes of everyone who tries to lend a hand

to those who are falling behind.

 

But I am motivated yet to press on because the more people willing to fall behind

a few steps to help out someone struggling means the more of us who get to the top

And we will stand on the precipice and scream at the top of our lungs

 

That we were wrong from the get-go; because it's an uphill battle on the way, 

but you realize one day that all along at the top was a spot dedicated to you

and all the broken ones who persevered and came through

 

And even at the top of the ugliest mountain there's a beautiful view. 

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