I awake exhausted
From a languid night
And the long day that threatens
Eyes too blurry from the past
To focus on today
Absentmindedly, I lotion
Skin that stretches to accommodate
My sins
My moods
My memories
The heat is unbearable
But I wear this blanket of shame to keep me in
To keep you out
Like a condom
Ribbed for your pleasure
Corpulent thighs, jiggling
Take a picture, it lasts longer
Than the taste of powdered sugar on my tongue
Or caramel sticking to my pudgy, greedy fingers
No one sees the unhealed trauma
The hurt, the pain, the unhealthy coping mechanisms
They’re all on display
But all they see
All anyone ever sees
Is my skinsuit
***
All I Have to Say 
Powerful. It’s hard being a woman in a man’s world, but maybe this is about something more. So many different skinsuits on display, causing the person within to be overlooked. It’s hard for people to look beyond the flesh to see the human soul.
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I like your perspective on this poem. When I wrote it, I was thinking about my struggles with my weight and body image.
I’m very obese and some people have a hard time seeing past the weight. They pre-judge heavy people, assuming our weight is due to laziness, bad habit, unwillingness to try, etc. When, many mordidly obese people struggle with mental illness, unhealed trauma, and other underlying issues that need to be addressed before lasting weight loss can occur. I’ve lost hundreds of pounds over the years, but it always comes back because I’ve never addressed the underlying issues.
I guess, like everything else in our society, this poem can be applied to our tendency to prejudge people based on what’s on the outside. We all wear bodies, which are just vehicles to carry our souls through this troubled world. What’s on the inside is what really matters, but what people see is the outside, and that’s all they care about. They judge us based on the superficial – the color of our skin, our hair, our body type, beauty, age, style, clothing – all the things that don’t matter at all.
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That’s brilliant.
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