vee tarks ~ ♥ i don’t have to wear a bra if i don’t want to (but maybe it’s best that i do) ♥

i don’t have to wear a bra, if i don’t want to.  

but when they told me to unclasp and let the baby blue straps slip down skinny arms, i said, okay, and i let them go.

i wouldn't have dared to ask them if they had any sugar-coated goodies to show.

he said, you lost the game in the first place -- so this is what you have to do.

i was a preteen in a coma of my own doubt, a brain that had become a temple of strawberry mush and mirrored upskirts and hypothesized chemical imbalances.

maybe it’s best that i wear a bra for now.

i don’t have to wear a bra, if i don’t want to.

but in the middle of my chest there’s a garden of zits and blood bubbles, and the boys said while nudging one another, why do you have herpes on your boobs?

i mumble, i don’t have herpes on my boobs. when i walk away, i hide my blemished garden of hormonal mistakes.

the black scoop necks and the cherry bikinis are cut up and turned to rags, rags, rags, used to cleanse the floor of dog hair and dirt.

i cried in the 7/11 when i picked up the those barriers that you’ll say you use but you don’t, only because i kept saying no, no, no, it’s too early, i really shouldn't. if i was born with chafed lambskin instead of my own skin, then maybe i would've let you, because it would've hurt you at least half as much as it broke me.

i don’t have to wear bra, if i don’t want to.

but, by the swing sets where the children played with doting mothers and proud fathers, you grabbed me tight by the ribs, swung me behind the apple blossom tree and held my arms to my waist and said, shh, no one is going to see. no one is going to see when i jab your fingers into your eyes either, but i don’t tell you that.

for your birthday you said you wanted me instead of the cake i bought you with my own allowance with the periwinkle blue icing and strawberry crème filling. you’re my cake, he said, you’re my present. but i bought you cake. honey, but i didn’t ask for anything, all i want is you. when you pile your two-hundred pound colossity on my pink black and blue ribs, i can see the hunger in your one unpatched eye and i can smell your pungent pirate breath travel up my nostrils and tickle my brain lobes. if i hadn't sneezed in your rotten face, then maybe i wouldn't have kneed that one gift you have where it happens to hurt the most. i’m a sick girl, i tell you. i’m not sorry.

i don’t have to wear a bra, if i don’t want to.

but maybe it’s best that i do.