sometimes i find

i want to press myself in a book like a flower

to flatten my spine so my shoulders can be higher

 

but if my body wasn’t fragile

and dried up like plucked flower

would i radiate

what ive been pressing to be?

 

if my words shaped my body

would i walk balanced and not wobbly

as if the passion in my chapters

was more than just part of me

 

i've been wondering

how a daisy could grow toward the sun

knowing its stem

is thin and unsteady

while a book that could press it

knows nothing of its cover

and is read without needing to

 

i keep telling myself i'm ready to grow

and still suffocating

between heavy pages

 

when i was 14

my mom asked

“why would you ever cry about being skinny?”

i didnt have the words to tell her

that it wasnt so much about being skinny

but rather how every time i saw a picture of me

my soul would unwillingly shrink

to fit inside this wiry body

 

still

often it does

 

and when i was 14

my teacher told me

that a hypothesis is formatted

in an “if then because” way

 

two days ago

my therapist told me

about dialectics-

 

the belief that for every thesis

there’s an antithesis

and somewhere in between

is a sweet truth called synthesis

 

see i want to believe her, but

if

my soul was a thesis

and my body its antithesis

then

i know there must be no such thing as synthesis

because

my figure is fragile,

fragmented and wilted

 

while inside i am

powerful with festering passages

 

so i ask myself

over and over again

 

if i was a little more plump

maybe a little less lazy-

would i feel more like the book

less like the daisy?

 

and will i ever find myself

between the two