between book and daisy
sometimes i find
i want to press myself in a book like a flower
to flatten my spine so my shoulders can be higher
but if my body wasn’t fragile
and dried up like plucked flower
would i radiate
what ive been pressing to be?
if my words shaped my body
would i walk balanced and not wobbly
as if the passion in my chapters
was more than just part of me
i've been wondering
how a daisy could grow toward the sun
knowing its stem
is thin and unsteady
while a book that could press it
knows nothing of its cover
and is read without needing to
i keep telling myself i'm ready to grow
and still suffocating
between heavy pages
when i was 14
my mom asked
“why would you ever cry about being skinny?”
i didnt have the words to tell her
that it wasnt so much about being skinny
but rather how every time i saw a picture of me
my soul would unwillingly shrink
to fit inside this wiry body
still
often it does
and when i was 14
my teacher told me
that a hypothesis is formatted
in an “if then because” way
two days ago
my therapist told me
about dialectics-
the belief that for every thesis
there’s an antithesis
and somewhere in between
is a sweet truth called synthesis
see i want to believe her, but
if
my soul was a thesis
and my body its antithesis
then
i know there must be no such thing as synthesis
because
my figure is fragile,
fragmented and wilted
while inside i am
powerful with festering passages
so i ask myself
over and over again
if i was a little more plump
maybe a little less lazy-
would i feel more like the book
less like the daisy?
and will i ever find myself
between the two