Mirrors were created

so you could see you clearer.

They were never meant

to shatter your reflection,

turn beauty into an obsession,

bend light to shade

the brightness in your eyes,

or create a refraction of a generation

too obsessed with being seen.

They want to see the outline of your inner structure stretched through your skin.

They want to go spelunking in the gaps they call cheek bones.

They want to ice-skate across your complexion,

despite the burning in your stomach.

They want to hang nooses from your collar bones

to strangle any thoughts that you may be thin enough,

that maybe, this isn’t your fairytale.

But baby, you don’t need these things.

Tell me, when did Beauty become the Beast?

When did protruding bones scraping between silhouettes of a ghost forest ribcage become something you desired?

You were not made to compliment Prince Charming.

You were not designed to be a clothes hangar,

or a coat rack,

or the anatomy of a park bench.

When did pop top ten become more treasured than the beating of your heart?

How did they get you to believe that you were not meant to be heard,

but be seen?

That you were only valuable if they could trap you between picture frames?

That sweat was more powerful than pure blood spilled

to wipe away your name and the lie

that human love can cure your pain?

Your spinal column was never meant to be a mountain range along your back.

Your value does not increase as you decrease,

nor is it lesser if your body creases in all the wrong places.

A Lamb has already taken your place,

and the only thing you are starving for is His face.

Your ribcage cannot build you a stairway to heaven.

You were not made to stretch, shrink, dye, bleach,

or only just be seen-

you are not a piece of laundry.

And I will not let them hang you out to dry,

because a Beloved was sent to die,

that we would stand upon mountaintops so the world could see

a reflection of an Artist insane enough to create exploding galaxies.

You ARE a mirror washed in holy blood; so you tell me:

When did Beauty become the Beast?