I do not want to be envisioned with flowers in my hair.

Or be seen with my back arched, eyes smiling at the sun.

I want to be seen with my head down,

My neck stiff from memorizing every crack in my floor

As I pace back and forth in the night, because I’m too afraid to go to sleep.

I do not want my shoulders broad, 

But instead rounded,as I hunch my back to sit,

As I hold my mouth open when I’m not talking,

Yet can’t speak up when in public.

I do not want you to put the flowers I pick from the stems, 

As we walk home in my hair,

They do not belong there.

As if you try to paint me like something not from this earth,

As if to remove the dirt from under my uncut fingernails that make me so flawed.

As if to edit my edges that don’t rhyme, from your lullaby.

Put those flowers on the ground where I leave them.

Leave them at my feet where they no longer dance in the breeze

But lie flattened beneath my stomps,

Destroyed by my carelessness.

Do not envision me by the shore with golden skin,

When I am pale from winter’s glow and cannot  swim.

Do not exaggerate the secrets of my eyes,

When you tell me I seem to eternally squint.

Do not envision me with flowers in my hair.

It is not the truth.

If you must change me.

If I, as I am, am not worthy of your pen.

Not ready for your canvas,

Then see me with two giant heads at war,

As I buoy back and forth unable to make up my mind.

See me with my dragon’s tail as I tear our pictures off the wall.

See me with my harpie’s wings as I flee from every broken word.

See me with my ogre’s growl as I curse the names of stolen dreams.

If you must change me.

Make me more the monster I already am.

But don’t you dare put flowers in my hair.

By: WerepupJeremy
Photography by: Melissa Cheng