A funny way of showing it — Summary

I have a funny way of showing it, My lips turn down when they should be up;

Rather than nourish, I starve Because thinner limbs with bulging lips are the fad.

I never let my tears touch the ground but muffle them, Stifling my body's right to raze.

It's never me I reach for, it's always someone else or something new, Something that shines but dims in my grasp.

Tell me I'm wrong, that all that neglect was because I was coming home to me;

The only time I looked at me was when I caught me unawares from the depths of parked car windows.

Who will blame me for thinking I didn't love me enough.

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The speaker admits to a "funny way of showing" love, and the joke turns bitter fast. Every example is a small act of self-denial: a mouth that turns down instead of up, a body starved to fit a trend, tears hidden before they can fall. Even anger is held in, since the body isn't allowed its "right to raze."

The poem's real subject is self-neglect. The speaker keeps reaching for other people or shiny new things, and those things lose their glow once they're held. Meanwhile, the only glimpses of themselves come by accident, in the reflection of a parked car window, which is a lonely and telling image.

The tone is quiet, tired and a little pleading. When the speaker asks to be told they're wrong, it sounds like hope more than argument. The last line, a rhetorical question, lands softly but sadly: who could blame someone for believing they never loved themselves enough?

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