Soft in the Middle

by Shelby Eileen

don’t be scared when the full weight of my heart tests the strength of your hands I’m trusting you with something I barely trust myself with

you can talk like you’re in love with a person without really knowing them at all

she’s something more like droplets of rainwater you open your mouth to catch because of how sweet and delicate it feels to have her on your tongue

everything is always happening; trying and doing and falling and failing life is never still

I resent how goddamn rare it is that I feel loved, honestly but then I remember how very moving it is that I honestly feel loved at all

Damn. This was a punch to the gut. Too real.

some subjects are best put to rest when your words reach for scalpels more often than sutures

it really doesn’t matter if I lose a few pounds or 10 or 20 or 30 what is 30 pounds of ice off a glacier? when my mother says, “I think you’ve lost weight” I don’t let it feel like a compliment anymore because no matter what I lose I’ll never lose enough and if I lose enough I’ll have lost everything

Bless this passage. A reminder that turning my back on over regulating my weight is the healthiest choice I’ve ever made.

you could lay yourself completely bare on the table- with your worst fears on this plate here and your wildest dreams in that bowl there but they’re just not hungry no one ever seems to be hungry for you

I ruin everything I touch and boy do I know the shape of my own body well

Ouch.

I’m worthy of being a witness to beauty the stars shine for me too

I am huge there is too much of me, and not in a good way - from the girl whose favourite animals are whales, and bears, and elephants

feeling like I was high on your words when I’d never done a drug in my life

and most of the time she just happened to be soft and sexless singing always studying sunshine so as to become as lovely as its light

I feel myself becoming a cave; curving around my centre hardening to protect what sometimes makes me feel hollow

the world stacks the cons of being soft but that doesn’t stop me from reaching for the clouds while embodying them too

I don’t want a great many things from life so the things that I want that I can’t have break my heart the most

there are buttons all over my body press them press them until they break

the only requirement of loving me is that you do it gently and gently does not mean less than it simply means softly, knowingly, responsibly

I’m sure the flowers take no pleasure in dying on the wind but their loss is necessary for new growth to occur therefore my remaking is also necessary for new love to bloom

I’m just trying to figure out how to remain soft in a world that only knows how to be hard

I was sold the belief that beauty came packaged in thorns and don’t be surprised if your hands come away bloody smear it on your lips and smile

how I wish someone could know me and think: her freckles are my favourite thing about her her body is like a mountain range; messy, beautiful, enough to split the sky my hands in her hair could hold me for the rest of time she is a world I never want to stop learning

I don’t know what it is to feel wanted only what it is to want

girls hold so much love inside of them infinite and curiously undiscovered like the universe and the seas

it’s unfairly rare, and so goddamn difficult but sometimes I can stand to look at myself naked and think this is right this is the home I’ll never have to leave this is mine this body is a bloom, always shedding petals growing anew twining into foreign foliage retreating when conditions get too harsh

your fragility has never compromised for the sharpness of your edges the possibility of you breaking has never diminished the beauty of all your pieces

My heart feels like it was made to shelter yours.

I think that touching you might be like touching a painting a little forbidden unquestionably satisfying

Big Portrait of a Lady on Fire vibes

I want you to know that you can be soft for me even when you’re hard for the rest of the world the world gives us no choice

the stardust on my fingertips is proof that I’ve been reaching for something better it means, one day, I’ll hold the stars whole

for all the times I wanted to tell someone that they’re beautiful and that they make me happy and that the world is a better place with them in it: you’re beautiful you make me happy the world is a better place because you exist the positive things are what we will regret holding back the most

maybe to comfortably read these words you just have to pretend that they’re not about you but if writing this was uncomfortable for me should reading it really be comfortable for you?

do you build yourself? or do you just fall together?

because the world is just too harsh a place a space too cruel for my soft, broken words to bleed into

there’s broken glass in all my limbs and burnt out lights behind my eyes how many young people feel older than nightmares?

but with you my hands feel like paint brushes and your body is the softest canvas

this is goals

love, you might have been a shooting star just for me just for a moment

how do I just let go of what my hands wanted to hold so badly they shook with desire of what made my chaotic heart finally, finally calm of what my stars told me I needed

I couldn’t handle how he left you once he used you but I handled it so you didn’t have to handle it alone

you told me you loved me once twice so many times I started to believe it forgive me if I thought we were more than friends my mistake, I guess, to love those who only love me by mistake temporarily as warm as summer rain, as fleetingly as summer itself

I am beautifully experienced without the help of anyone outside of myself

💕

I never felt more beautiful than when she said it through the wire across the stars she didn’t even know me but she made me feel as real as houses as whole as heaven

would the world know what to do with an innocent* girl who loves her own moans so much so she may only ever gift them to herself

a body as big as mine still bruises

💕😭

when I say soft I mean the inside of a rose I don’t mean all this flesh

fat girls teach themselves all the names of the bones thin girls wear on the outside of their bodies

there I go again I went and fell in love who knows for how long it doesn’t matter all I know is that their name tastes like cookies in my mouth and the thought of them washes my mind clean