Bellybuttons

—

By 19—
she was the walking representation of everything she hoped she would never become.
Days were hard, but nights were always harder.
She brews coffee at eleven because she is terrified of her dreams
and searches for inspiration at the ends of cigarettes,
because she likes the way the smoke stings the walls of her throat—
like every self-loathing insult she has ever swallowed.

Stressed and depressed but always well-dressed—
she hides her melancholy under layers of empty arrogance,
stitched into the seams of her worn out boots and ironically trendy ill-fitting sweaters.
By the time the unwelcome sunlight slips through the gaping mouths of her yawning blinds,
she can already feel the warm fright of the day creeping down her fingers.

Some people are not made for mornings—
it takes her 3 cups of black coffee and 150mg of social stigma,
just to get her blood moving.
Too young for Parkinsons—
her hands tremble from too much caffeine and too little confidence.
By three she can feel the longing
for the dust bunnies that had gathered around her organs while she was sleeping,
gnawing away at her rib cage.

She didn’t ask for any of this.
Her clumsy words trip over her taste buds more frequently than she trips over her own feet.
She must have slept in the day when we learned how to make sense of these broken syllables
that clash and bang and leave bruises on the insides of our too-soft skulls.
And now, she is left scrambling, trying to speak in a language
that still feels foreign on her tongue.

She writes in illegible scratches and scribbles because she doesn’t believe
that anything she writes down is worth trying to decipher.
And her hands are still too small
for all of the things she wishes to create anyways.

Most of the things she owns,
are either lost, broken or just completely useless.
And most days,
she still feels far too much or nothing at all,
but she is still standing here trying.
Because she refuses to believe the things that she does not understand.

At 4—
she was told that bellybuttons are fingerprints left by God.
So she spent the next 10 years trying to phone heaven,
but not once did anyone ever pick up.
Now she knows that bellybuttons are just another means of pissing off your parents
that day you felt alone.

At 20—
she hopes to finally realize that there is nothing romantic about her awkward apologies,
or the way she feels claustrophobic in crowds,
and only finds comfort among trees,
Because she understands why they spend their whole lives
trying to hold hands with the clouds.
At what age do we lose our sympathy?

All her life, she has felt the heavy sighs of lonely creatures
fill the spaces in-between her vertebrae.
She knows you will always be able to hear her harsh cracks of compassion
each time she twists her tired spine.