Staying Alive

It's so hard to find the space to love yourself when everyone is telling you to turn around

I’ve gotten close to it though

Close enough to see the yellow tape and signs barricading the entrance

The signs say that I'd be prettier with lighter skin

That I’d look better with a gap where my legs meet my hips

And with hair that falls in waves at my shoulders

I’ve gotten close but not close enough to see over the small silhouettes and dainty features that patrol its gates

The same figures we’ve been coaxed into believing is the only way to be beautiful

It's hard to find the words to love your pudgy waist and bushy eyebrows when they've been kept from us

Or maybe the words themselves haven't even been invented

Maybe there’s no way to say that I love everything about myself

Even the parts I’m told I shouldn't

The parts that makeup companies want me to cover up

The parts that fashion industries want me to lose

The parts that deem me “pretty but not their type”

I’m working from scratch here

Mining tunnels to a cave with cobwebs in its crevices and weeds where a stream once flowed

A haven of self love and acceptance

I'm sketching a masterpiece

A work of harmony and warmth that stems not from the chiseled jaws and minuscule frames that frequent my phone screen

Nor is it tainted with the useless rhetoric of insecurity fed to us on spoons that are grasped tightly by the slimy fingers of the patriarchy

I’m searching for a love handcrafted by me and for me

That no one can take away

So that I can stay alive in a world that wants everything about me dead.

~kcp