Monster in my Closet

That girl is beautiful, they say, her hips, legs, thighs
All packaged in a tan thin skin, hair bleached blonde.
She is what she is, the product of devotion.
She desired the thin thighs, a stomach that was wrinkled with lines because she can't stand having a roll.
So much that she read the calorie lines.
The magazines cinched her in and pulled her tight,
her ribs cracked with a lifestyle that told her that despite biology she could reach beauty beyond belief.
Doctor, doctor, please change what God gave me, please pump up my chest, please help my nose stick out a little less. I am not content with what I see, I feel like my own worst enemy.
That's what I see, the doctored image of a woman.
She's there every day in my closet, ribs poking out, tanned to perfection, lips hungry for attention.
And she stares at me. Watches me in all of my moments of imperfection.
A single roll above her panty line would make her less athletic.
That's what men desire "athletic" a kinder word for skinny.

Here I sit writing another stanza of angry poetry.
Because some ignorant male hungry for perfection degraded a  "real woman"
Whose hips were larger than her lips.
Who could carry a baby without worrying about compromising her body.
And this, this beast in my closet breaths heavy down my neck telling me
I'm imperfect.
And I with my gall believe her, I mimick her movements, praying that one day I'll end up looking just like her.
But like broken glass and all those beautiful devices and partaking of each little vice
I end up sliced on the floor...twisted up, lagging, and gagging on the "perfection" I'm being driven towards.

And everyday it's a constant struggle with the beast in my closet.
So before you let your tongue slip
Get a grip, because I never want to be that monster in my closet.
Starved for acceptance and perfection that is absolutely unttainable.

Details

It was there, overturned, a life shattered in an instant.

Twisted up in metal fingers marked by stinging tears.

Littered below the wreckage illuminated for seconds in red and blue lights were the things:

 a crushed water bottle, a jersey, and a picture.

A picture of a woman, perhaps a wife.

The white SUV overturned dumped out the details of a life, next to the flowershop, at the corner of a red light.

The life had become glass slivers in the hands of firemen and EMTs.

All the while the steering wheel was pressed flush up against gritted pavement, perhaps white knuckle held only moments before.

Shaken souls shiver to breathe again, as the ambulance sat still, the sirens shrill long evaporated into the night.

I sucked in a breath as the sky cried

causing droplets to roll

down my chin.

Reflected lights lit droplets up, reflected lights in puddles, reflected...

What if you and I were to die tomorrow?

Who would pick up the details of our lives?

What would be remembered when the things that happened to be left behind by me were a

shoe, a notebook, and a bracelet.

What would happen when my life was reduced to the details of me?

They say you only live once, but would I want to be remembered by every pair of lips I dared to kiss,

every cliff I jumped off of in an attempt to impress those who could care less?

Or by the foolish bravery of a night spent lying awake in the arms of a handsome stranger, all for satisfaction of saying, "you only live once?"

A night filled to fulfill a lustful behavior.

Would I want to be remembered by the hearts I broke?

Is that what I would choose to be remembered by?

Or would I want to be remembered by the words I spoke, by the time spent with people at home, by the words I painstakingly wrote in an effort to live!

Remembered by my mother, my father, my brother...

The people who built the flesh that clings to my bones

 in this body that houses me and my mind. 

Could I spend another day wasted with hate of this vessel?

In my wholeness, in this fleeting youth.

Spend another day ashamed of the brown skin that stretches across my hips...

I would not be remembered for the thinness of my thighs...

I would want to be remembered for my mind.

Because when your life is reduced to the details...

What do you think you'll be remembered by?