there is a ritualistic pleasure in painting your eyelids
varying shades of red—it is always red. and, really,

if you were being honest, you’d come to realize that
you are making art, not a person. 

you carve your thighs into distinct ellipses, 
butcher breathing flesh into hourglasses, 

treat your own body like the meat of another, 
waiting to be dressed into a meal to consume.

but you’d only realize that if you were being honest—
which you never are. there are truths embedded

in the muscle beneath the skin of your lies. it’s true; you are 
doing this for yourself. but the self does not exist within

a vacuum. your self remains buried under the layers of
grime clogging your pores, the microbeads of media

embedded into your skin, the sunburn from the scathing
gaze of voyeuristic men. the self is tiny—you are more.

but maybe, you are your own voyeur. after all, you can never
see your body for what it truly is. eyes are the window to the

soul but you peer in from your neighbors’ ventilation shaft. 
there are new eyes everyday—one day you are too spindly, 

a paper straw man, and the eyes belong to your friend; you
have the same irises. on another day, too rubenesque in the 

eyes of a long forgotten lover; you have the same choroids. 
there is grief to it—you will never see your body, your creation,

your identity, in its truth, in its reality. you will never love it for
it has never really been yours to love. and, yet, there has always been

loving and being loved. you think it is too much to ask that you do
both. so, till then, you will paint your lips crimson and ask yourself

in the mirror if he will love you yet. will he look at you and see himself
reflected in your eyes? you have always been taught that beauty is pain

and being beautiful is being enough. so try a little harder, cry a little more
bleed your fingers dry. you’re pretty aren’t you? enough aren’t you?

paint your eyes. prove it.