Darling

darling, you were born from sadness. the night you were made your mother;

she didn’t want to, but she kept you anyway, and comments on your eyes,

a little too green to pass as her own hazel. sometimes she kisses men

behind closed doors, crying when their bodies invade her own, PTSD,

but nobody’s listening. you’re beneath your own sheets with a girl

who has hair like wilted sunflowers, curling in on the edges, suffering,

and darling, no amount of kisses will ever make that better, those scars

on her arms weren’t from the thorns of another rose. i know you are alone.

strange men watch you with your cigarette, flickering between shadows

in dingy avenues. darling, your face belongs to the magazines, but your heart

ought to be left abandoned in the trash to rot, to dispel away that toxic,

you exude suffering, even though your palms trace something ethereal,

and it’s destroying you from the inside, like the grey in your lungs.

and darling, maybe you didn’t want to, but you entered this world,

so pick up another cigarette and burn from the inside, like your mother,

and your mother’s mother, and the faces watching you from the windows.

darling, we are all here, we are all existing. even if we’re not quite alive.