I told him I wasn’t anything at all

I told him I had my roots in dirtied soil

that the tree of my parents was made of splintered wood

and peeling bark

and the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, after all

I told him I had twenty thousand walls

to block off the twenty thousand flaws

and scars

and it wasn’t worth it, to try to get them to fall

I told him my head was full of poison ivy

toxic vines folding over the veins of my brain

and that the nooks of my cerebrum

spewed out vile words that only I could hear

and he took me by the hand and he said that

he had seen the core of my heart, and that

it was nothing quite as dark and quite as

terrible as I had thought

and he took me by the hand and he said that

every flaw I put against me

and every mistake I cursed myself for doing—

those weren’t anything at all

and I told him I wasn’t anything at all

and he said that I was everything.