My tummy doesn’t have to be cute. It holds my internal organs. My thighs don’t have to “crush men’s skulls”. I use them to carry myself. My stretch marks don’t have to be tiger stripes I earned. They came when I grew.
You are the only shade of love I’ve ever worn and maybe this isn’t how it works
but I think love grows differently every time.
So you love her in different colors than the ones I left on your walls
and that’s okay, and that’s good.
I hope you love her clean and new and beautiful
and enough to paint the whole town red
Just leave a little corner
all golds and midnight dark
first breath of dawn gray
where you can remember what we had.
The line where we ended was so blurry but it’s finally clearing up, from where I’m standing
When the sky lights up in every color and you hesitate on your first porch step,
I’m asking you to think of me,
and when I slow dance to jazz in my room by myself I’ll think of you, but only for a moment.
I don’t mean that to be mean, see, it’s just that we’ve already given each other so much time
and we’ve only got so much time left.
I’m working on restoring myself
into the quiet masterpiece I thought I could be,
so it’s okay if I’m just a watercolor memory to you now.
Just let me
be a good one. —Elizabeth McNamara (via sad-plath)
