Describe Yourself (I’m Still Scared To Use Hinge)

Pretty bitch (when it’s three am and i’m looking at myself in the mirror and my ego is getting the better of me, otherwise i think my face is too ethnic—the ancient aztecs would’ve loved me though—and too white at the same time)

Compulsive—

I compulsively and impulsively do things

(do i have adhd? should probably get tested so people stop asking)

I am staring at my body

At the funhouse mirror in the county fair

All long hair and petite and wide hipped

(some white lady once told me i had ‘mexican hips’ and i should’ve clocked her if she wasn’t so old and i’m still not entirely sure what that means but that’s a weird thing to say to a latin girl when she’s nineteen, no?)

I feel observed,

In public

Like I am constantly being baited into social error

I crave and detest attention

I like to read

(and at night i will gaze upon such nonsense it makes me sick and i begin to hold a personal grudge against Garth Ennis)

I want things I can’t have, (like, i want lemonade but not this lemonade, the lemonade from two summers ago)

Would you still love me if I told you everything wrong with me? If I told you my fixation on religious imagery stems from—

I like to paint

(if i love you i’ll make something in your image and also i can’t really remember when i was eight years old and my favorite color is a green i’ve tried to find my entire life and will probably never be able to see again because it was the center of a lake on a roadtrip through the yukon when i was small)

I’m young and dumb

(but i feel so old it hurts—I blame this ⅖ on the expectations of the religious sect—cult??? jury’s still out—and all the guilt and the violence that came with it and the other ⅗ on bad blood and familial tradition)

Would you still love me if I was a worm?

Would you still love me if I told you I couldn’t sit with my back to doors? Or that if I don’t check behind the shower curtain, I am confident that I will be Psycho-ed? That I can’t stand loud noise in or outdoors? That I am a slut but only of the soul, because I want you to eat my mind or some other dumb shit I might confess on account of a sleep-deprived high?

Would you still love me if I said men scared the living hell out of me? On account of the reception of violence from them since I was just a baby? That I once crashed my bike while trying to get away from catcalling and rode home with gravel stuck to my bleeding knee?

I’m good with animals and small children and my roommate’s cat literally won’t leave me alone

Would you still love me if I told you I hated vulnerability? That if I said I loved you, I’d immediately ask you to take me out back and shoot me? That I feel like I present the illusion of it and so people always tell me everything because I'm just so goddamn trusting? Because all people want to be believed.

(And, like religion, i believe until it makes me sick.)

That,

my favorite songs are Ethel Cain’s unreleased, and AC/DC, and Gaga and just about everything except country (best friend gets in my car and is stunned by the rapid switch from Danzig to Pop Smoke to Dolly)

and every sibilant sound that my mind latches onto

and i also latch onto you

I really like trees and the beach

(please want me,

please like me)