Howl
Location
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.