Alive (For My Sisters)

This is for my sisters whose hearts break open with each new dawn.

For those who feel their pulse so desperate in their temples

for beating hearts bruising tremulous veins

for those wearing skin like suits of armor:

gladiators passing as sister, mother, daughter, friend,

our breasts and waistlines labeled with adjectives not seen in anatomy textbooks

our hearts and brains left unnameable, undiscovered,

we become more than the sum of our pieces

as some of our parts scream to be known as alive.

Alive.

This is for my sisters who pray in the Temple of Disbelief.

For those who worship in the Temple of Disaster, of Shame,

who pray to the goddess of Just-One-More-Day,

who try to find one thing worth believing in,

this is for my sisters

who can't find how to live life in the skin they were born,

who kneel at the altar

purging their life-force to uncover their hidden essence

their hearts too full of life to recognize what they

are dying for. 

This is for my sisters who play Russian roulette with their bodies

believe they'll never die since they're the ones with the gun

outsmarting triggers

counting each tick on the adrenaline scale

rocking out to the sound of heart on bone or heart on skin:

it's the game we play, praying to the god of perfectionistic sin

hoping the shroud of insecurity accentuates our lifelines

and humility compliments the tone of our skin.

She fires the blanks without a blink - living can seem so close to death

and Control is the name Fear gives her lover

before the silence shatters.

We've all stepped on sidewalk cracks or over lucky pennies

on the days we weren't looking

we've pushed beauty from our stomachs

squeezed it from our scars

we leave behind a hologram of who we could have been

mashed into a 3-D mirage of what we try to be

massage our temples to rub out our dreams

conjure the genie from the magic lamp of our mind, praying:

Love me.

Fear me.

Need me.

Beautiful.

Alive.