You picked out the colorful crayons in the rusty, old stale-smelling box.

The reds, the blues, the oranges, the yellows

The colors that you said makes the sides of my face, my heart, my hands.

The colors that you deemed me to be: beautiful, pure, ordinary.

Like the colors of a typical golden rainbow.

Red, orange, blue, green, purple, yellow.

But I picked out the other crayons.

The ones that weren't so pretty, the ones not everyone wanted.

The caramelized browns, the darkened blacks, the tanned greys,

The rusty silvers, the colored whites, the roughed up indigos.

The colors that marked all the bruises in me, the very same bruises

That I hide under my long sleeves on a hot summer day.

I remember you frowning, as you struggled to pull those crayons out of my hand.

You said to me "No,"

As I pulled back harder

The crayons that were deemed as un-special broke apart, while your colorful crayons remained untouched, not broken

Into a thousand little pieces, no longer recognizable, no longer belonging to each other.

I looked at my damaged crayons, the very colors that aligned my broken soul, as I looked back at you in writhing defeat

Hands against my cheeks

While my sleeves remain untouched, unfolded.

You rolled up my sleeves

Exposed my bruises to the hot, shiny sun

Took your own colorful crayons, so beautiful and so pure

And colored in my lines of stone cold abandonment, and hand-shaking fear, alone-in the room tears, and eardrum screams.

But I didn't want you to

I pulled away, and your crayons smudged against my bruises

Its colors no longer seemingly perfect, no longer seemingly pure,

But became bruises itself.

Not perfect, not beautiful, anymore.