Through her piercing hazel eyes,
the road to happiness starts
with a glass plate of perfection.
The diary of destruction
nests below the pillow of roses,
nestled and bare below.

Shame is a silent murderer,
slitting your throat half past midnight.
Body heavy, body armed —
the flesh is caught in
a war of shotgun release.
The words “too big” have come
out of your own mouth.

The glass slipper has always been too
small, too tight. Shrinking down came
from the mother’s whisper, the mother’s cruelty —
pushing and prying with
taunts in an armour of acidic perfume.

Megan Tyler is a senior at Sturgeon Heights Collegiate in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She hopes to share her story with young girls around the world to kill the stigma on mental illness. She has been dealing with depression, social anxiety, and self injury for a couple of years now. In the midst of losing friends and becoming withdrawn from the crowd, she connected with her English teachers and turned to poetry. She hopes that her poetry will speak to those who are struggling with the darkness of depression and many other mental illnesses. Following her senior year, she hopes to publish a book of her poetry and to take on any opportunities that the world will throw at her.

Natalie Chyi is an 18-year-old from Hong Kong who has recently moved to London, where she will be studying law for the next three years. She started photography to capture moments and pretty things/people/light/scenes as she sees them, and that idea is what continues to fuel all of her work. Find more of her work on nataliechyi.com, Facebook, or Tumblr.