Why Make Time for the Cruelty?

How could I explain,

that period of hesitency

where one must accept themselves 

with unconditional love

or self-loathing

to touch themselves

and feel

that momentary bliss of freedom

from the accusational world

that awaits in whispers

to punish

those who enjoy to exist

in pleasure alone

and I do lay hiding in my own skin in shyness

persistent 

trembling with anxiety

over what would people think?

when in my own seemingly dying world

it shouldn't ever matter

as long as I'm alone...

I touch myself on the outside

running my fingers over the scars, 

the weight

the hair

the pimples

the bruises...

I used to think they were right you know

with the whole

how can you love yourself when you look like that?

how could I be beautiful 

if I was deemed ugly

I used to let those thoughts run my life

with the idea that sex

was only well when with another

as if I needed permission to orgasm

I used to...until one day 

I chose myself

to love the body I stand in

to love the lonely soul inside me

and promise her

like a kiss to the forehead

that she was worthy of any drop of pleasure

she could harness for herself

through sickness or sin

I promised her

that I'd never make love to another again

without her consent...

and now

I touch myself wherever I please

despite existing

as a rose trembling to bloom

I imagine myself being seen

abstractedly, artisticly

for the quivering lips of another

to one day look over me

with thick desire and need

that their teeth hurt

to sink into my skin

and claim me

for their hands to clentch within themselves

over the idea of romantic depth

I lick gently over my own lips

at the broken expression of such a face

that'd have to look over my own

as someone crushed 

but trying...

and then I scrub away my brain

with no name, no place, no one to run to

I hold myself in glorious spasm

a twitching anthropod

telling myself

my shell is perfection

I deserve my releif