Shedding Gravity

(I wrote this a few months ago and performed it in a slam for my poetry class. It was inspired here in all of your blogs so I feel I should share it, I just didn't have the courage until now... So here it is <3)

Shedding Gravity

We begin as whispers,
Keyboard klick- klacks in midnight dress,
Floating through a nowhere-land of status,
And judgments.
We aren’t aiming for anything but survival.

As I stand in the mirror,
They are the fleeting thought that,
“I’m not good enough.”And we take that in as a part of ourselves.
Black branches against a yellowed sky
Thinning as we grow.

If school is white waters then we are twigs,
Slammed against the corners
Colliding with fish
And latching on for survival.

Perfection isn’t real,
But we are whole,
We obey,
We take notes,
Do hair, smile
Chew, swallow, and repeat
Without question.

One day those mirror thoughts
Tickle a nerve,
Pickle my face
Before my eyes
This scale lies.
I become treadmill mounting
Pinching my sides because I am not enough:
Smart enough,
Strong enough,
Pretty enough,
Thin enough.
Soon I see that I cannot run all day!
That running, even for hours, is not enough.
So I “cut down.”
I am not a tree reaching at nothing,
I am strong branches ripping down the sky.

And I catalog.
Because 1000
No 700
No 500
No 300 calories is still too much.
Because pounds were created to be dropped.
I am screaming inside
Because I can’t lose 3 pounds
And my goal is 97
But I’m lost in the sea,
Somewhere between 100 and 99.

I join the echoes,
The whispered screams
The middle of the night tears
drip-dropping on the keys.
My body is weak,
But I am not alone,
For once.

In this worlds it is easier
To count by two’s
Learn your ABC’s
And lose weight.
Because people judge us by
How we act and how we look,Not by who we are.
Because there is one sure way
to get to heaven:
By smiling on command,
Wearing big sweaters
To hide your bulging tendons,
And losing.

Because without mass…
… there is no gravity