Black and Golden I washed my hands at work yesterday And as I did, I looked down at my arms revealing the old scars that once bled out from under you. You didn’t even know I was hurting, or trying to die faster than everyone else. Inflicting pain just to feel like I was part of something bigger, leaving pieces of skin under my fingernails. I couldn’t fathom telling you That this body of mine, a ‘golden temple’ (as some people view their own bodies, and rightly so) was everything I grew to hate. If I told you there was nothing to love about me, a piece of me wondered if you’d grow to believe that too. That, like I do, you would be greeted with disappointment as you looked over my body. When I wore fitted dresses and t-shirts, You would stop seeing the enchanting woman in her equally captivating clothes, but the places they didn’t stretch to. At last, your eyes would be open to the rolls of fat that unleash themselves from my back like gushing waterfalls with no end in sight. If I painted my flaws on a canvas for you and pointed out everything I spent each twilight crying over, you might have actually have started to see them. Not just in the way I look, But my pessimism towards #life fundamentally. A constant reminder that nothing is permanent Despite markers claiming to be And love labelling itself as the ‘forever bond’ between two people; Something that could only act to make you whole instead of broken. What a punchline. If I took my mind in my hands and gave it to you, all of my damning thoughts my heart aches, my struggles would be realised. You’d know that despite waking up next to you, getting up each morning was so utterly depressing to me because I had to put clothes on my back and say hello world like a lion roar despite having embodied the confidence of a timid dormouse; Only then would you understand how hard wanting to leave my bed was. So much of me wanted to open myself up to you To splatter this colour of me on the canvas we created Once blank, but slowly became filled with flicks of colours from each end of the spectrum. Each time you kissed me; it was a rosy pink, like the lips you once kissed me with. Each time we made love; our canvas painted itself a golden yellow Even though this part of me was pure black, I should’ve let it corrupt our rainbow picture But oh, how I didn’t want to burden you with my broken heart.