I knew a girl that never wore shorts or short sleeved shirts,
she never wore shorts or short sleeved shirts.
I mean it’s something that no one really thinks twice about
or even once about her.
She sat behind me in US History,
and the day the discussion of religion stripped away masks, she told me:
“Mariam, I don’t believe in religion.
All it leads up to is worked up hopes so they could just be shattered.
And madness,and sadness, I don’t know what to believe anymore
and I can’t wrap my head around why an ‘Almighty god’ would want that?
I’m tired of being told I’m a bad person,
I have myself for that.”
I could read it on her face before she even told me,
beautifully scripted on each tear,
I listened as those same tears painted me the war scene between her and God.
I didn’t bother to argue,
I didn’t want to stuff my beliefs down her throat the same way the boys did.
At least that’s what the school told me, what the building itself told me.

The desks told me of the Godless things she would end up doing at some person’s party,
but it’s not like he look up much anyways.

The lockers told me of her mommy and daddy issues she tried to leave back in middle school,
but the 10th grade cave sparks with these lighters called tongues
and she accepts the blame even though
she wouldn’t dare to play with those types of fires.
The flame spreads upstairs to the forensics hallway
where the rest of us, beasts, dwell.
Maybe that’s why no one knows where her locker is.
Maybe that’s why she doesn’t eat in the cafeteria, it’s a forest fire waiting to happen.

JK Rowling told me “This girl isn’t easily read like how she reads my books
and she ends up being too much for people to handle
so just quit while you’re still in the beginning,
no one has made it to her last page.”

The bathroom stalls told me:
“Check her wrists, I’ve seen them cry.
They are forced upon those tears with a thin shear metal
that’s addicted to loving her skin
controlled by its partner who knows it will be the victim next.
Feel her thighs,
artificial waves have been made into them,
her body is the Red Sea,
from attempts to pry her soul from her mortal body.
It’s said that you humans are not beings,
you’re souls that occupy bodies and she’s just tired of having to live in hers.”
But I remember once she told me that she isn’t suicidal,
that she finds comfort in a cold blade,
she has learned to calm down with the the color of red.
She has given her tear ducts and break and decided to let her veins hold that burden.
One slice at a time, on this canvas of a body she has painted war murals on
with missing flesh and bitter tears because she is told that it’s too late for God to save her.
She tells me she finds comfort and escapes insanity,
blood rushing out proves that she is more of a person and less of a rumor,
she is more a person and less of a rumor.
“Emo” slapped across her face with enough passion
as the back of her father’s right hand.
This proves words hurt too, I guess.
That’s all that’s left of her:
blood tears, rumors, multiple blades and long sleeved shirts
to hide that fact that we, her beasts, are to blame
but no one would dare to look on her canvas.
But maybe, these emos, these whackjobs, these attention whores
that we have given labels to
just wants to feel, for the very first time, what it’s like to heal.
And I wish I can say more
than just sorry.