Judge Me

Judge the whispered breaths between words of determination,
neglecting the pleas of a friend on one line while death is on hold on the other,
Because love wasn't enough to make him hang up and pause the world from
free falling until it all went black.

Judge the powdered layers upon that beautiful face,
used to mask out what's real like a professional masquerade, blame it on the insecurities felt from years of neglect and words of rejection reminding her that wasn't good enough to feel pretty.

Judge the fact that her tee-shirt sleeves resemble the Nile,
a sweeping length of cloth covering up scars she spent hours trying to align and place in orderly fashion,
so that blood flows away in organised tributaries of pain.

Judge the laughter bouncing about in your ears like turbulent planes, resulting in
confusion at the misplaced identities of lame jokes but you won't know
the number of oxygen masks required to keep a pillow alive every night.

Judge the various excuses that are dropped like bombs in Iraq each
time you ask to come over to a house where drunkard father
and a bastard child remain hidden in armoured tanks called secrets.

Judge the protrusions of her ribs through stomach muscles that
have been forced in on a regular basis like a kidnapped child
being raped by the anorexic fingers of a teenage girl.

Judge his obsession to nail biting. Like a crack-head he can't do without
his daily drug because unlike you, there is a countdown
playing in the background and cancer is the examiner waiting by the clicking clock for him to submit his life.

And then you can judge me, for always having a reason for every abnormality,
informally accepted as an anomaly, because I always choose to see the good in people,
but judge yourself first, for taking up a role nobody gave you the script for.