Button Eyes

When I was 5, I believed God made people form

cloth and button eyes.

That we all start off as dolls 

and would be dropped into a galaxy.

Each perfect star its own place in the sky, 

I was created with wool.

Stitched with giving.

Stuffed with kindness. 

Started to rap this skin around my body,

first feet, 

then knee,

then hips.

So close to being perfect,

belly,

chest. 

So close to being perfect.

God ran out of fabric.

Decided to pick the closest shade,

to stitch with leftover ugly.

Dropped me in dirt

I thought mistakes don’t belong in the sky. 

At the age of 6, in the bathroom

I’d wished my skin white.

Scrubbed my fabric face over the sink.

I turned red as a peach.

I’d rub my skin until bone.

Until the stain was gone.

Until the mirror held a self-portrait 

of all the things I wanted to keep.

I was 7, when I saw a tailor first time

They are on my aunties flat-screen TV 

asking me,

Do you want beautiful skin?

Makeup to cover up those ugly Blemishes?

Say It even covers birthmarks!

I run

my hand's sew threw the air 

to grab my hello kitty notebook

before the commercial ends. 

I embroider the phone number onto the page

and stand on the thread of beauty.

I was 8 

At Exposition Park

When kids morphs their mouth into needles to say, Why

are you so dark right there?

Were you burned? Cooked too long?

That I am a waste of fabric.

The thread breaks. 

I am 13, in the living room and my mom asks me 

if I want to get my birthmark removed 

Those words burn each stitch in place.

My fabric decays like a rotten peach.

My cotton is replaced with everyone else’s smile.

I am worn.

I am torn

from thorn’s and button eyes.

I am tearing all the time. 

My beginning was laced with feeling 

unfit for love, life, or limbs.

But I have learned, I’m learning 

That even scaring is healing

I think, for a moment,

of all the possibility 

I answer no.

Not to prove their words mean nothing

or to crush, everyone, who had the audacity to say something.

I say No,

for me.

5 years old.

Over the sink.

exhausted, Enough

and leaning towards the mirror. 

If you search long enough  

You’ll find all the stars in my beloved eyes