This Doll Wants to be a Beautiful Thing

Timidity is holding me hostage when I line my eyelids today.

I drag the felt pen, and I’m subjected to a pressed powder standard,

No generosity, no success.

But I persevere with a psyche built by girl dolls– ones more novelty than bone.

Stilettoed feet, lashes molasses-thick.

Outfits ripped and pulled back together.

Somewhere along the way to 21, I learned self-abandonment.

I became better at avoiding my own reflection.

There are still days when I want to be both the blush of a cherry

and the blood of a bruise.

To hold eye contact longer than a splitting hair, but also go saccharine soft.

I watch cocoon sheddings of past eras blow away

and who am I to be but new again? Born over and over for consumption.

Yet my mother still keeps pictures of me taken on my birthdays.

The ones from strange angles where I don’t quite recognize myself, but the sentiment of I love you is more genuine than ever.

It loosens up what is buried in the warmth of my chest.

Sometime soon, the fabric of discovery will drape around me instead, touching wrist to wrist, cheek to cheek.

I paint my lips red, shed light on the already glistening river streaks of foundation.

The mirror reflects something that is neither fractured nor finished,

but whole nonetheless.

Paying My Tuition Came at a Cost