i was sitting on the wood floor
outside of our closet,
the one filled with
bubble baths and body sprays,
my mom's old makeup and nail polish
the small things that you stack up over the years,
the one that i've snuck into time after time
when i was twelve,
to find a tube of red lipstick for pictures
and mascara,
because i still felt so pretty with just that little touch,
and i took pictures on my nintendo 3DS
and i didn't care about what my skin looked like,
like i do now
and i can't quite tell you when that changed
i sat there and found a
bottle of body oil -
aromatherapy, it read
for happiness
and my hair was still wet
from the bath i had just taken,
where my mind went rampant
with reasons why
and the most quieter, but still there
reasons why not
and my cheat ached with that same sadness that i felt a year ago
when i was tiptoeing to that same closet,
worried about my own wounds
heart pounding with sworn secrecy
borrowing and then putting back a tube of neosporin,
just in case,
for months and months
before i found the courage
or perhaps just the fear
to stop
but i wasn't there for that now
i opened the bottle,
and poured to oil
onto hands that probably didn't need it
and onto a mind and a soul that did
change, i thought,
is sometimes subtle
but you need it, just the same
