ManicWorld Magazine

If worth is conditional
on achievements and good deeds,
You would love me greatly.

The need to prove myself
is a pledge I’ve recited,
committed to memory
since I was five—
In my sleep;
Face buried in books 
over my study desk;
Under the direct sun, 
marching with the band;
And on the stage
where I walked in platform shoes 
six inches high
evening gown sparkly,
the back of my heels strapped and bloody.
Flashed my pageant smile,
showed strangers I was deserving
of their appraising.

The need to earn my place in this world—
A fresh tattoo imprinted in my core.
Every beat of my heart,
my pulse, 
and blood circulating
in frail veins,
are debts I must repay
as long as I breathe air.

The constant striving,
the endless reaching,
hoping that maybe this final strike
is the one shot that wins it all–
That somehow the debt will be paid.

Despair towers over months, 
years even, of work 
patching ancient emotional wounds
inflicted during the formatives,
of the being
I never had the consciousness to choose.

Somehow the thought of death,
of finally leaving this place where
scar after scar made the skin thick,
where resilience is not by choice,
but under duress,
makes me look forward to the day
I won’t have to convince myself
that I am deserving
of your glances and kind words.

And with great relief,
I won’t have to justify my existence
to you, to them, and to myself
any longer.