After you’ve seen me cry and laugh and roar with anger.

After you’ve seen my flaw ridden body.

With its dark hair and neglected bends.

I hope you can still love me after you have seen me.

Maybe you’ll love me even more.

And there is hope in Honest Error

so I hope you have faith in me getting better.

Not so shy and timid.

I promise that when you let me draw lines on your back

and you decide to decipher them, perhaps with pencil, maybe with permanent marker,

onto your walls it won’t be ‘I love you’.

It won’t be a poem where I try to convince you of my devotion.

It’ll be a cleft chin, a chubby thigh, and wire hair.

It will be languid bodies and words, oiled together.

When you speak to me in words, I’ll look at you with feelings.

And there are roses that grow below my belly button,

there are faces that sigh beneath my feet.

When you see me vulnerable for the first time,

bare and cold,

my nose will bleed.

Use the petals of my roses, they’ll suck up the red

and become that much more beautiful.

I know you will know to pluck them gently.

To fold them together and stop the bleeding,

my love,

I hope you know not to look at me yet.

But to close your eyes and kiss me.

To let me wrap my arms around you and feel like glue before it dries.

Before I’m fixed.

And in coming to terms with being beautiful,

I know it will be hard to love me.

But I hope you manage the task

and it doesn’t leave you half full but empty.

Drained out completely.

Because if you can look at me after that,

we’ll both know, won’t we?

after you’ve seen me