My voice

Is something which my ears fail to define

When it kisses the air, it splinters

Into exactly 2 billion and 3 question marks

Hooking round my pores and

Peppering my flesh with pock-marks of stray

Periods

My voice

Is a taunting besmirchment, a reoccurring and

Inescapable reminder of this vessel in which I’m hostage;

And when I speak I am rife with self-contempt

For it grinds my skull as a rogue cheese grater would

To brie

My hands

Are disembodied from my mind

Floating, bloated figures with dangling digits of 10

Swaying like dandelions and fragile as a tortoise shell

Numb to the textures of my

Sentiments

My eyes

Perceive not what that of others behold, but a

Palpable contortion which screams and pulsates

With a seemingly legitimate solidity, my carcass

Quivers whilst run through with veins of substance

Foreign

My skin

Ripples in dimpled stutters, affixing itself

To mirror my mood, not its true shape upon

My bones; it bloats in agitated conundrums

Swelling with contrite, expanding on whims of dismaying

Audacity

My mind

Shucks the exocarp of my physical form

Each layer of rind mounting up as my past

While arduously they tussle in endless fracas

For prominence over my person:

My mind,

Which contains anxiety and depression, and memories of my attempted suicide;

My skin,

Which has born self-induced cuts and bites, scratches and bruises, and now permanent scars from my near-death;

My eyes,

Which can never see myself truly, for the anorexia consistently bombarding;

My hands,

Which under so much pain has transpired upon my person;

My voice,

Which has degraded and defiled my existence for countless years;

My voice that can sooth;

My hands that may caress;

My eyes that see goodness;

My skin that gives warmth;

My mind that holds compassion;

For others.

Why not me?