My Body

My body is not a vessel

for you to cram your misogynistic views into

no magazine preaching best bodies of 2014

or how to attract a mate in one way

can fit into this size 9 waistline

My thighs are stuffed tight with secrets that only I choose who hears

and my skin is a map of the journey I had to travel to get to be

a girl of developing curves

as a 16 year old female I’ve heard more of what I have to do to get a man

over what I can to do to be happy on my own

I’ve been told that my clothes aren’t right and that I need to try harder to get people to like me

but honestly who do I even need to be for everyone to like me?

But I’ll tell you what I can do

I can slip into an existential crisis faster than I can a pair of sweatpants

and devour a carton of ice cream alone

Then I’ll wake up feeling like a new person because I did it on my own

and I can run through a field of flowers and scream my opinions as loud as I wish

and I know that I don’t HAVE to be, but I’m a pretty good partner

and I don’t just mean physically

I can listen with all my attention and give all my affection

I can cause fireworks with my words and tell you of my secret world

and one secret is that any one can

any one can start a movement just by simply proving it

because if one day we wake up and see that we are all beautiful

we could smash the patriarchy, set the beauty industry ablaze with what we want to see

we could paint with all the colours in the wind and in our hearts

let this be my mark on the world that I was one of the millions of girls and boys and everything in between that is or isn’t seen that we have the power to be

a size whatever and feel beautiful because numbers don’t calculate personalities

have blonde brown black grey white blue or any color of the rainbow hair

and our skin can be molded with any shade the earth has to offer because we are human

and without one another we can survive, but together, we can thrive.