The girl suffered within the disharmony of opposites:
Fat/thin, pretty/ugly, charming/obnoxious, nice/mean,
Superficiality fist-fucked her soul.
These opposites (meant to attract) subtracted
from her self-worth.
Living amid the pinch of friends,
The clench of men,
And the slow self-destruction of cigarettes,
She preferred the consistency of isolation.
Allow me to change voice, and refer to “she” as me.
For all these things I was,
“Unworthy of love” was one of them
Its mere idea unleashed a non-self-induced nausea.
Yet it was all I wanted, and was too self-involved to know.
And then there was you and the phone, you and the phone;
Me on my back on the ground of my bedroom,
Still furnished with the pink bed that I picked out in grade school;
Leaving a monochromatic stain on the carpet
From all the blood,
From the wounds,
From people and their words.
I understood from you: a kind gesture of pity.
“He feels sorry for me,” I tell myself
And your words ricocheted my open wounds.
But you wedged the word love
somewhere tangible. In the part of me,
That wanted to be saved.
You introduced me to myself…(Hello. Pleased to meet me);
Upon descending my head, I realized that
Love is spreading within every pore,
And atom and crevasse in my body—
It was the most vital lesson I ever learned;
With a billion filled holes to prove it,
And you to thank.