Hollow

We are hollow shells On our bodies they carve Images that they expect us to become Imprinted onto our skin And we complying, allowing this destruction Hoping that we would finally fit within our own self So we light our insides on fire to illuminate depictions that make us But this burning is not an illumination in colors of our own No, it is an incineration of our truest bodies and minds An eating of our souls alive Lines, they make our binds Though not rope or twine Our binds are words written and spoken That we have taken into ourselves again, Hoping, hoping to finally feel that our bodies contain worth Jagged script in the world's own hand Incantations that they expand and demand Heaps and heaps and heaps Heaps of words, heaps of hate And most of all, heaps of weight That is all that we've seen in ourselves What our entire existence has revolved around Our bodies becoming our adversary because of the numbers that it carries And so we listen not to the pleas of it But to those of society, those that beg us to starve everything but our anxiety If only to be their version of beautiful A version that never contained our belly or our thighs or our hips or our size And so we cut these depictions into our skin Hiding the proof of what the world calls our sin And these are no longer lies but facts that we've surmised And facts that come alight as we burn our insides To our own demise But when will we realise that we can define beauty Not a definition of shape or of size But one comprised of all that's inside And perhaps in this understanding we could become something truly magnificent Something that would leave an imprint on those like us So that they would grow in an earth of self-love and of self-worth They would become for themselves Just as we can become for ourselves But if we burn we will leave something good behind Our ashes will be soil in which they come alive Palettes from us and our roots and our earth They will sprout from us They will sprout from us