Audrey Hepburn

This poem was written by my friend Sami. I read this, and absolutely fell in love. It was so relatable and true I almost started to cry. She agreed to let me post this to share with everybody.

There are so many
things I want to tell you
like how
on the couch yesterday
evening I
was sitting on your
lap with your hand
on my shoulder and I
so
wanted to bend down
and kiss your cheek
like how you kissed my
forehead
when you left for the
night.
But I didn’t.
Or how that kiss made
me
(with my frizzy short hair
in a page
boy cut) feel like a
girl,
a proper pretty girl,
like the Audrey
Hepburn
poster on your wall.
I should said all of
this.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t say how I
love
your curved sarcastic
smile or
your black pea coat
with
the buttons that have
anchors
or the nerd jokes you
blurt out
from time to time, so
spontaneous I know you
couldn’t
have planned them out.
And I love
the way you make
smiles with sprinkles
and M&M’s on your
ice cream
cones and nerdfighter
jokes.
I love how you rename
the
folders on my computer
and
search for the things
you
know don’t exist just
because
you want to see me
blush. I
do, but I’m blushing
not because of
what you say, but
because of
how you look at me.
And I
should have told you
all this
last night
when you stood up
from the couch
and planted a kiss on
my forehead.
But I didn’t.
Because I thought of
all the other things I want to tell you
like how I am a bomb
that
will one day pop and
let off smoke,
and I am not whole but
broken
and bruised. You do
not know I
run three times a week
in the mornings
although I feel
nauseous or that I
walk to the pharmacy
once a month
to exchange a thirty
dollar bill for
pills and the enemas
you don’t know
I need to use every
other night. And
you have not seen me
on steroids
with fat cheeks and
face flushed,
ashamed of how I look
and too
tired to go outside.
You have not
seen my eyes grow
tired from
becoming a drugged
insomniac.
You could not love me
then because
you keep Audrey
Hepburn on
your wall. When I am
sick,
I am not Audrey Hepburn.
I am just me then, but
a little
wider in the face and
skinnier in
the hips and breasts.
And sometimes
I will be in the
hospital. Then,
I will not need
someone who can
make faces on ice
cream cones, but
someone who can hold
my hand and
let me cry and tell me
that
I will come out of
there as alive
as when I was carried
in (because
I could not walk). And
you will not
want to hold me then
because you
will be disgusted by
the ticking noise of
the little bomb inside
my intestines
that ticks on and on.
You do not
know what I am at risk
for. Cancers.
Liver disease. Kidney
disease. Things
that could kill me if
my immune system
doesn’t get around to
finishing the task
first. And one day, I
might choose or
be forced to lose my
colon, and I will
need someone to kiss
my forehead not
when I have pounds of
make-up on
my face, but as I lie
listening to my
heartbeats on a
surgical gurney.
I will need someone
brave
who will see me as a
person when
I am little more than
an IV and
a prescription pad.
Because beneath
the medical apparatus
that may one
day cover my skin, I
am a person.
A beautiful person
with a beautiful soul.
You too are beautiful.
But you are meant for
someone different. You
are destined for an
Audrey Hepburn, someone
whose beauty
will always radiate on
the outside. I believe
that beauty must first
and foremost come
from the inside. I am
not
Audrey Hepburn, but
maybe
I am just as beautiful