Chapped knuckles tear

Across broken teeth,

Shattered when she smiled too hard.

Maybe if she’d thrown her cares away,

She would’ve been beautiful

For once.

 

Arsenic-laced sugar and Cyanide

Lipgloss coat

The mind of the Daughter. Only then

Will she become “Woman”:

When her blood consists of concealer and misogyny,

And her nails are painted a deep shade of

Adderall and Madonna-whore complexes.

 

She tilts and teeters,

High on heels stacked

From library-scented aspirations.

Attach World Trade Centers to her feet

“Don’t you dare come crashing down”

“Desolation and rebirth depend on you”...

 

Cuts from the broken

Shrapnel of children’s dreams

Trace against her whiteboard skin-

Sewn together with barbed wire stitches

And trans-continental train tracks-

Reinforced by media mogul messages of

Melasma malformations and botox beauty.

 

Her voice is broken marble tapestries and

Razor wire promises- filtered out by

Oxy-cotton balls and tired

Sienna colored filmstrip memories.

 

The sands are falling from her hourglass figure,

And pronouns are just from necessity and not care.

She sings in disputed claims of times long ago

And wraps herself in what a Woman should be.