Chameleon* I’m a Chameleon, Changing my colors to match my surroundings, I’ll make you feel comfortable. * Trauma like armor, I’ll blend in, so you don’t hurt me. * I can tell your mood in your footsteps, the set of your jaw, the tiniest tells; a twitch at the corner of your eye screams danger. * You don’t even know what you’re doing. * i was raised on a bed of nails, watching the light under my door, listening to every creak of the floor, the quieter you are, the louder my skin prickles with alarm bells. * I hear everything you say, I know the nuance in your voice. * You say I’m thoughtful and attentive. * Conditioned to put your needs above my own by projectiles. My good intent shattered against a clean wall, the remnants dripping down like tears. * Your thoughtful silence, my brain translates as cunning, my shoulders rounded against a strike that will likely never come. You are not my past, you are not built of daggers and anger, but my injuries don’t see it that way. * Throbbing against your kindness, the sweet caresses where heavy blows have landed, words of encouragement get lost in the vitriol of a long dead sea of self-loathing. * I am a creature of survival. I adapt, I am evolving, shedding broken, damaged skin. * Talking and writing, building bonfires with words and practice, practice, practice, until your goodness doesn’t hurt. Your faith in me doesn’t destroy us. * I’m a chameleon, I’ll change my colors to match my surroundings to make me feel comfortable, *

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Unedited​​​* They see my photos and call me sensual, enchantress, desirable; and I look at my unfiltered, unedited, naked truth and smile. * I can work an angle and lighting better than a snapchat filter and while they stare and imagine my skin like warm porcelain, and imperfections like marble, revealed carefully, I run my hands over my pudding belly and admire my batwings hidden from their greedy eyes and leering imaginations. * Let them see what they wish and call me beautiful, while ignoring the dimpled thighs encased in denim and made more appealing with a camera tilt, shadows secreting the unseemly hair I can’t be bothered to remove before every whimsical desire for a little validation, * Look closely at the loosened skin pulled taught by holding my head just…so, close cropped edges to hide that crease in my waist where late night decadence lives. * I am not ashamed * This body with all its secrets, has aged properly for what it[‘s been through, and art does not imitate life; except that the percentage of me you see in photos equates how much of my soul I’ll give you upon meeting. * My secrets are mine to hold like angles and shadows and if you unlock that door, the lighting won’t matter anyway.

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Portrait * Maybe you look in the mirror and see weathered skin and unruly hair. Maybe you see age and weariness, and maybe you like that, or maybe you don’t. I don’t know you, but darling, I can see his love and devotion to you. * He has captured your image time and again, loving you through shutter clicks of years you’ve shared together, and honey, his love shows. It shows in the way the light glows on the tips of your eyelashes, In the far off look in your eyes and the tilt of your chin towards the camera. He sees you in ways that we, the lowly viewer, can only infer. * He worships the shadows that delve into the corners of your eyes, painting lines you trace with critical fingers, and he sees it in the gentle crepe gathering at your collar bones, once smooth but now aged like well-worn leather, loved to a buttery softness. * I don’t know what you see in the mirror, but in the lens he points your way, my dear; in the lens he points your way, I hope you see love.