Rip Off Its Petals

I am not really here. I'm an illusion. I'm so perfectly put together you can look right past me. Pleasing production if not symmetry, I'm easy to look past and I like it that way. I don't particularly like being seen for my surface - what a shock; I wonder why. I like being seen in that way where we pry fingers into the ribcage and rip it open to show people who I think might get it what lives inside. Like that moment when Beetlejuice's face opens up and snakes come out. 

Not that I'm all snakes, but I suppose I like the shock value. The poisoned peony. I've known too many 'men' - and again I use that in quotes who've been drawn to me for their perverse desire to see something delicate and voluptuous and rip off its petals one by one because they can. Because they like the way they can enact violence and there won't be any blood and there won't be screaming. We'll just wilt inside ourselves and they can go look for a fresh flower. Because there's always a fresh flower. But what about the rebloom? What about regrowing your own petals inside your stomach before you have the strength of a stem to connect them and hold them up? All the petals you work so hard to grow in the incubator of your stomach, like a pile of pillows or pillowcases or cashmere blankets. You want them to cover you, but no one else gets to come in. Not anymore. You've learned your lesson. I am not really here is just something I tell you now. 

I don't believe it. I know it's not true.

But you don't know that.