Remember when you had nervous butterflies
And a birdcage chest
And you’d close your eyes and touch your nose because in youth
You always knew who you were
Now
Your body is a vessel.
Repeat it until it sticks
Like stones to broken bones fused together crooked
Like smiles forced as your body gives
And it always gives to this new brand of torture
Androgen pumped into your too young veins
You didn’t choose this life
But was it your body or your brain that revolted
Or was it a combined strength mutiny
Deciding from day one you’d be labeled
Like fragile packages where your warning read “f***ed”
But your body is a vessel.
And on days you can’t leave bed because you remember who you are
Remember
Your body is a vessel.
And you’ll remind yourself
As you’ll remind those around you with their understanding
Lacking empathy
Or maybe vice versa
And you’ll wonder when people forgot who you really are
Or if they ever knew to start
You’ve become a charade of a charade
Inception triples until even you are questioning who you’ve stitched your skin to
But whisper like night stories of monsters and men, to whatever has come to inhabit you or whatever you have come to inhabit
My body is a vessel.
And maybe if I can tear open this chest and let my disgust spill out like the butterflies
Now anxiety
The day you found out that the mitochondria was never really the powerhouse of the cell
And you don’t even know yourself in the smallest of ways
Who is this stranger?
My body is a vessel.
And you can stitch yourself back together like grafted arms onto paper dolls
You were made to rip
Like your skin from muscle and muscle from bone as you pierce and tear and rip like cutting words reflected on your skin
Sharp tongues weren’t made for kissing when
Your body is only a vessel.
Inside you may be made of childhood dreams of towering above sky scrapers and creating ecosystems in the indent of your footsteps
Yet here you are so small, navigating through an ecosystem not made for beings like you
Or who you turned out to be
And how do people who once knew you so well not see they never knew you at all
They only knew
Your body as a vessel.
And this body will become your grave
And that grave is your final home.
Even if it never settles into home at all.
And as they shoved your soul into a foreign body
Like sticky fingers forcing puzzle pieces
They whispered
This is where you live
This is your home
Make the most of it.
This vessel.