"to be myself"

I would say it is quite fair,

yet unfortunate,

that it is only a rare moment

in which I am allowed to be

fully myself.

To be myself

is to be this girl,

to be myself

is to take back what they stole,

and yet to be myself

is more difficult than running through hell.

I gaze in the mirror but the specimen before me

is nothing like

me,

the monster of the swamp

or the fairest of them all

but that thing

that stares back at me

is not me,

it has never been me

and it will never

be me

because they stole me,

the shell and the villain

is not me,

I am the melancholic and the eclectic,

the eyes of water

and the soul of gold

but I am not

the blood that comes out of the arm

that dangles off of the shoulder under me.