My brother killed himself
on the twenty-eighth Thursday of last year
and I missed four days of work
and my mom wanted to know ‘Why’.
My brother
he was always a fan of beauty
but what he did
was not beautiful at all.

And last week I got the news
that one of my good friends from high school
had overdosed
(again)
except this time
she’d gone too far
and now she was gone.
And I had a hard time falling asleep at night
and her mother
hugged me tight
and thanked me for coming to the service
but I did not
want to be there at all.
This is not
beautiful.

The girl down the street
would’ve turned 21 last year
and I can scarcely imagine
the wild times she would’ve
(should’ve)
had.
But she is buried six feet deep
after falling nearly 300
and she did not leave a note.
This is not
beautiful.

My freshman year of college
and my roommate was beautiful
and how I wanted to be just like her.
But she wore herself down
till she was

almost invisible
and if you blinked
you had to go and find her all over again.
So now her parents are no longer supporting her college tuition
but are paying her hospital bills
watching their daughter crumble.
This is not
beautiful.

So y’all can take your narcissistic
romanticizing
and glamorizing
of self harm and eating disorders and committing suicide
and shove them as far up your ass
as you possibly can.
Starvation is not beautiful.
Killing yourself is not beautiful.
Sadness
is not beautiful.
This note I am writing
is not beautiful.

But you
you are beautiful
and it’s about damn time you start believing it.