My skin takes shape

Out of the blackened ink of the pen you used to write me
Read my complexion like poetry. White-out the generations of scars, replacing them with grandiose memoirs of a culture where pain wasn’t the root

Slide down the core of my chest, into the pores of my metaphors, being careful not to touch the already damaged floors inside the plantations of my heart

Modify the blades of my spine, redrafting the very incline of my confidence. Straighten out the margins of my inner hatred and re-teach me how to write every word, blot, and space critically-recreating the content of my body

Rewrite me. But use nothing but black ink. The impenetrable black. The shade of black that covers all anguish. The type of black that places a tint over the years of inferiority, insecurity and shame. The black that hides all traces of history, so that the reader cannot judge it with biased preconceptions

Erase all smudges. Re-write me bold. And after I take form, memorize my narrative. Rewrite me brilliant

Rewrite me using parables that change nations. Rewrite me with similes that stand on the edges of my lines and scream until stereotypes no longer exist. Rewrite me verbally, using all of the rights of free speech to say, “free me, not from your laws, but from myself” long enough to proclaim that “I am beautiful”

I have a dream that one day when my edges are spread across a flat surface that someone will want to write me, no rewrite me. And when they rewrite me, they will rewrite…me…free

–Bridget "Rize" Jones, 20, of Miami.