Sophomore Year Chalk Drawings by Lily Gerhard (16, California)

I didn’t want to leave the womb when I came out screaming
But when I did I was saying loud as a baby can
Love Love Love
The word was my obsessive compulsion
In my mind to make sense of things I turned my IV bags into plastic veils
And I sewed the wires into a big ol’ wedding dress
In the back of my mind I was screaming 
Love Love Love

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I’ve only recently started finding it funny that Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty
Because when I see my reflection walking by in the windows of old cars on my cul-de-sac
I don’t understand it because even though the shapes of my eyes are faulty
My mind is screaming
Love Love Love
In the November before I turned sixteen 
My hospital styled wedding gowns 
Switched into college ruled paper and faux purple fur
It was random
And it had nothing to do with my crippled body and 
That is what I loved most about it
And before I knew it in January 
I wasn’t even wearing a wedding dress anymore 
Just a hospital gown again like I had died and respawned in a video game
Because girls like me can never go too far from an IV stand
And still whatever stupid pink swirl in my brain that is in charge of the way it thinks 
It’s still yelling 
Love Love Love
Love Love LOVE
LOVE LOVE LOVE
I wish there were words you could forget and relearn in different contexts
I wish that there were other lives except this one so I know I’ll learn words different for sure
But just because my gown was stripped from my needle damaged skin
Doesn’t mean that I’ll never sew a new wedding dress
This time it’s made of squeaky frogs and pink colored pencils
And maybe I’ll have to make one again
Or maybe this one will be the one I walk down the aisle in
Either way I’ll be saying maybe more quiet but just as loud
love love love

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