There once lived a girl
Who thought that everything was right
Until everything went wrong
Her life of tumbling, twisting, and flipping
Was changed forever by
A doctor’s appointment for her back
Then her life became months of
X-rays, MRI’s, doctor’s appointments, and physical therapy
Until that life too was changed
By a hard, plastic exoskeleton
Meant to keep her real skeleton
Where it’s supposed to be
And her life became
Looking in a mirror convincing herself
That she wasn’t fat
And counting the minutes on the clock
Before she had to trap her living, breathing, human body
In a rigid object
That felt like it was squeezing her insides out
Her brace hid her crooked insides
And she hid her pain behind words and paint
Surrounding herself in walls of paper and canvas
So nobody could see what she really felt behind them
Day after day she built her castle higher and wider
Until everybody saw the beautiful front
Instead of the person inside the walls
And it was her fortress that kept her strong
Like the bricks of creativity that she built it with
Because she felt alone in this vast palace of hers
And she had to find her way through the twisting, turning hallways
On her own
Because she knew that nobody would understand
She had seen the sympathy on their faces
And felt hugs they had given her
But not once had she seen understanding in their eyes
And when she got tired of hearing the weak help they gave her
The “It’ll get better”
And “Just push through”
She almost quit
She almost gave in to “It’s not worth it”
But she realized that she felt
From crooked hips to twisted spine
That she could do something
That she could be something more
Than what the doctor said she was
So she turned her skin to steel
Her heart to stone
And plugged her ears
So that what other people said couldn’t touch her
She told herself that she was not broken, only bent
And she became her own hero