Legs are supposed to be for carrying you across vast seas of gray pavement and sharp green grass

Arms are supposed to help you write the story of your life down on the blank sheets of the future that turn to the present and then the past as you drip puddles of bruised ink onto them

Heads are supposed to be the crowning jewel, the archive of the spectacular and subpar, the place where everything began and it all ends

Hair is supposed to be the curtains to shade your head from embarrassment, shame, and hopeless desire

Eyes are supposed to be the ushers that help you find your way to the soul, no matter how withering or womping

Noses are supposed to be for sniffing out the liars and the thieves, the broken and the damned

But instead:

Legs are used to compare you to the decimal system, degrading you down to a single digit if you are lucky, and more if you are unfortunate

Arms are used to beat yourself up about what you are doing wrong, what you are not doing, why you don't look like the girl next door

Heads are filled with useless lies, facts, and fears about how you are supposed to look and how it is fiercely adjacent to how many people will favor you over others

Hair falls out from the pressure demanding you be as perfectly flawless as the computer software that appears to make everyone else be

Eyes flood with tears shed from the devastation of not measuring up....or down.

Noses smell only the strong scent of everything they are not

and the heart begins to shut down from the horrifying rejection of not another, like is usually the focus in literature,

but of itself.

Oh how inside out and backwards and sideways the game of perfection plays out to be.