Sicker = “Healthier”

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“No one ever imagined. No one ever knew.

Nobody could tell because you weren’t that blue.”

The more you faded, the more it was praised

And everyone saw your illness but believed –

Your standards were raised.

So you became “healthier” when you got sicker.

“The pulsating veins and blood shot eyes will pass

But you will forever look like a sticker.”

A prize. A gift. The golden medal for someone else

Who never notices how pain rots on the shelves

But sex sells.

You never relied on those ideals, but they lived within you.

Too deep rooted to untangle from your truth

So no one ever knew

How the broken version of you was all fiction,

How you begged for mercy to nights

As they created the most friction

To a troublesome concept of worth in a young mind.

Why be kind? Why resist and leave it all behind?

Truth be told –

Almost no one that pushed this onto me so sincerely

Truly made it out, never saw it clearly.

But you don’t owe a single second of illness

To people who believe your existence is a grimness,

And to those still imposing standards on others I can only tell:

Save your self-hate speeches masked as advise for yourself.

Choke as long as needed. I’ve been doing it since I was twelve.

-JW

A Beg for Decency

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People tell me I can’t blame them for yesterday’s sins.

When they dread me or behead me, I’m the one to call it in.

People ruin all I have built so they can get a lesson.

When they chose to burn me naked, I kept my old dress on.

People talk what they can’t learn but withhold the blame.

When I beg for decency, they claim we’re all the same.

People crush our dreams with dirt but see, nobody wins.

When the guts go down the sink, we cut our lips on rims.

-JW

Décolletage Cuts

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My promises are as cheap as my perfume

But, love, I paid for it with my pride

So don’t stick it up my nose, let doom be doom.

…I’ll meet you on the other side

Without your backstabbing smile.

My hopes are as low as my décolletage cuts

And don’t try to convince me that it’s too much

Because two-faced boys dance where everything rots.

I’d suggest we never keep in touch.

I wasn’t the joke but you treated me as such.

My past is as vivid as my lipstick stains

So don’t play with the devil to ease your pain,

Don’t suck me dry just to fill up your veins.

Take your ego down the shallowest of drains –

Or keep your distance, stay in your lane.

-JW

Phrases

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“Can you tell me where it hurts and point me to the nearest exit?”

“Resilience is overrated in the promise land of Jokers who flex it

And your bruises are due already, pay up or leave the city.”

“Why bother leading the path if you could just look pretty?”

“Stand up and straighten your shoulders, baby, don’t be moody,

You’re not the next Marilyn in a black and white movie.”

“What’s up with the lipstick, don’t you want to go brighter?”

“I’m down for the fright but I’m not a real fighter.”

“Put a smile on that face, don’t you dare to make a scene!”

”You can only afford to be either sexy or perfectly lean.”

“What’s up with the jumpers, mate, are you finally expecting?”

“Please don’t drink and drive while you’re also texting.”

I hope you don’t find me writing down your innuendos vexing.

(Stop playing god, your moral’s perplexing.)

-JW

Roses all the way up

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Daffodils sing to me before I fall asleep. Or are they screaming again?

Blue sky turns black and this night tastes bitter. I burn as they ordain,

As they form a circle ready to take away the present. I sense their presence.

Under the masks their stares locked and loaded. Should I feel penance?

Clock strikes eleven when the kingdom is overthrown. The heir is hanged.

Nothing but bad omens spinning in carnival ride around my feet. Wrapping and hissing, their snakes are fanged.

Are they poisonous or filling aphrodisiacs in my veins? Impossible to tell up-close.

The lack of nobility in this crowd is pitiful – at least they filled the front rows.

Roses all the way up, thorns all the way down. Dethroned I sit in the pit, waiting.

No way back from here. Remorse leaves their eyes as breath leaves my cherry lips…

Laced in nothing but your broken vows with my last heartbeat I dream about kissing your fingertips.

-JW

Bittersweet Melody

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How do you live being soft-spoken? No shrieking, no debilitating insomnia or an axe in your chest?

How do you go on another day not feeling broken? Do you wake up after good 8 hours more stitched together than the rest?

It’s not a walk in the park to explain how my anxieties and other ticks make a day worse by the second.

Not to brag, but I want to leave my mark: crawling to every finish line with anxiety on my neck,

Yet coming in second.

The moment someone realizes I’m not kidding when I say I’m depressed is a bittersweet melody to my ears –

What a time to be alive, we’ve progressed. What a time to be alive… Now they know my worst fears.

Hope they ignore the tears. And open tears.

-JW