I walk
Books and paper in hand
Head down
Eyes to the floor
Just trying to get through school
unnoticed
I am a mountain
A freight-train carrying unwanted
luggage
I am a dumpster
Where some boy threw away his excess
And then walked away
Without looking back

I am that girl no one wants to be
The girl who wears her sin on her skin
I am unclean
Unholy
Unworthy of any affection
Besides the snubs and snide comments
From the sides of everyone's mouth

Silver-violet rivers cut
Through my pale island shores
Stretching the fabric of my body to its breaking point
Movement inside
Small twitches of thrashes and kicks
Are all that keep me moving
All that keep me alive

The life I carry inside me
He is holy
He is perfect
He is clean
This tiny little life
Defenseless against the cruelty of the outside world
My tiny alien
Now complete with toes and ­fingernails

I can't give up
I can't let go
Not when I am so close
Not when everything I ever feared
Ever hated
Ever ridiculed
Has become the only thing I love
And cherish

So let them scorn
Let them snub
Let them avert their eyes
Like I am a disease

Because I am so much more than that

I am brave
I am strong
And I am going to be a mom
At 17

So when I see him
Walking down the hall
In his red shirts and faded jeans
When I see him avert his eyes
And walk away
When I see him sit alone
And when I see his unshed tears
I know
He will never love the way I do
He will never care for something
The way he pledged those many
nights ago
He will never hear my baby's heartbeat
Or know his tiny fingers
He will never know his little face
Looking just like his father
And he will never know the edges of his child's heart

Because he is afraid
Because he cannot bear to stand up

And face the world the way I have
been forced to do
Because he is not strong enough to say those three words
To a life he helped create

He will never mean those three words
to anyone he says them to
He will never say “I love you”

Because I am the only one who carries our broken secret
Like a tattoo upon my skin
I am a mountain
Complete with silver-violet rivers
And a knocking sound within
I am an alien
Bearing life forms in my womb

But more than that?
I am a mother
Thrust into life too soon