Dysmorphic

I don’t have time to write very much about this tonight, but I wanted to share thoughts about body dysmorphia. Many people have little understanding of what this is, and how it affects people. To begin, I will share this poem, soon to be appearing in book print. Here it is below. More on this later.

Nobody hates me more than

my own worst enemy.

Can’t even cry;

don’t want to say.

My face in the back of a spoon,

upside-down, reflected back, distorted,

like a clownish cartoon.

Huge-eyed fly can’t settle.

Magnified five times,

I disappear.

Examine fine lines

that turn into crevices 

hiding secrets.

Like thin, grey elastic,

I am over-washed;

over-stretched.

Tiny fibres spring loose and fray,

Pinging coils like serpent tongues.

The mirror sends back distress signals,

warping flesh into dough,

spilling out, 

when only yesterday,

bones jutted like 

splayed rudders.

No anchor. Sharp thought assaulted,

whip-lashed by bright white spikes.

Bed of nails, grown numb,

So over-used.

Perhaps hide, wrapped within 

my thick, black habit, 

While this disease

brings me to my knees.

Silence the swarming

crackle of brain on fire,

dragging disorder into chaos.

One last black look

before I head off.