I am five and I sit across my mother’s lap

Praying for a human toy to assuage

The eternal boredom that is my loneliness.

I am six and I hold a baby girl in my arms

as I pray to God to never let her grow

I want her to stay this beautiful and delicate

Forever. I am seven and nobody plays with me

There is a baby dressed in pink

in a carriage full of toys that used to be

filled with me. I am eight and my math teacher

says I’m not good enough to be in the

intellectual competitions so I cut my hair short

and become a rebellious child. I am nine and

my crush sits next to me in class

he doesn’t know I like him but he asks for my notes

because to him, I am smart enough. I am ten

with divorced grandparents and a family

tearing itself apart. I am eleven and my best friend

stopped talking to me because my therapist said

I should keep a diary with the angry thoughts I had

And I’m angry at her a lot. I am twelve and I am

Valedictorian of my eight grade class but nobody

Talks to me and I am sad. I am thirteen and my hair

Is long, and my new best friend is a bitch and a boy

Grabbed my butt, but everyone likes him so I let him.

I am fourteen and I cannot wait to get out

 of this hell hole that has me pretending to be

this façade of a person that I cannot even name

I am not myself and I don’t understand why I can’t be.

I am fifteen and I have a crush on a boy who

Actually likes me back he kissed me on my birthday

And I kissed him back but my mother doesn’t like him

So I put on my brave face and broke both our hearts.

I am sixteen and I get a sick pleasure

from playing with emotions and boys like

they’re toys and I do not know how I fell so far

from who I used to be. I am seventeen

And I am Valedictorian of my graduating class

I am on a plane moving 2,540 kilometers away

From my family and friends and all of the places

I never belonged. I am eighteen and I cannot find me

The walls around my heart are so high I cannot

Climb out into the world and discover love

Or happiness. The truth is I do not know who I am

Not anymore not this far down the rabbit hole

I am so lost my only consolation is the books I read

And the poems that leak out from the pages

Of an old notebook filled with hate and resent

I am so alone my only companion

is the darkness of my room at four in the morning

I am a fragment of a girl who used to dream

Of wedding bells and little kids

running around a house yelling “momma”

I am eighteen and I do not see an ending

To this tragedy. I do not want to be a mother

I do not want to be a lover

I am eighteen and I have never met a smile

That lit up my world.

I am eighteen and when I see my thirteen year old sister

Running around with ribbons in her hands and the stars in her eyes

Saying she wants to be just like me when she’s older

I pray to God that she will never grow up

To be this fucked up.