Cobalt Blue
Monet almost never used
the color black in his paintings
“white lead, cadmium yellow,
vermilion,
madder,
cobalt blue,
chrome green”
But not black.
I wonder what I’d do
without the color black—
I think I’d fear the night less
if I knew I was only shadowed
in darkest shades of cobalt blue.
Jenga
She is stacked high like a Jenga tower—
full of holes and hands
that take pieces of her past
and bring them to the surface.
One wrong move and she’ll tumble over.
It’s odd because the higher she gets,
the more she can feel the wind
blow through her.
Houdini Girls
What is so wrong with the female body
that it must be hidden like it does not exist?
What is wrong with breasts? What is wrong with seeing breasts?
Why is a nude photo disgusting? Why do we hate our bodies?
We mark X’s on our flaws, on her flaws, on his flaws.
We mark X’s on her perfections
when we don’t have those perfections ourselves.
Is a body ours?
To pirouette with
or ink on
or touch
or run with? Or must it be saved for someone else?
Saved for only one pair of eyes?
Or one pair of eyes at a time?
There are too many rules to think about
when choosing a tank-top in 80° weather—
maybe it’s better just to sweat and be strangled by my neckline
and sleeves and not be called loose (not enough
to wriggle myself free either).
Who moves our lips and blinks away the sun?
Who picks us up and feels our bumps and bruises
and sorts us like fruit?
I know girls who fear invisibility;
they wonder why their fingers disappear
while erasing other girls away.
Houdini girls: who think their outline will stand bolder
if another’s fades away—
making another body irrelevant makes your body irrelevant.
A body is not a schoolboy to be dictated on how to be good.
It just is.
It exists—
whether a breast is hidden by a T-Shirt—it is there—on all women.
Why can’t our bodies be beautiful?
Beautiful enough to share with anyone we want
or beautiful enough to keep ourselves.
Beautiful enough to be ours.
If emphasis for gaining respect is on how I dress or do not dress—
what I show or do not show,
or to who I choose to show—
it will never be on who I am.
How can we ever be more than a body
when it is sun and moon and stars to show it
and sun and moon and stars to hide it?
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Not a question, but a statement. I absolutely love reading your poems - the immense beauty in your expression. Thank you! Thank you! It means a lot! |
Cheshire Cats
At night, we’re just Cheshire cats;
all you can see are the whites of smiles
and eyes.
We fall in the dark, like stars,
we scatter and stumble
our way around,
searching for others.
In the morning we rise up
huddled as one—
enough of us together
to light the world.
If some don’t resurface, we find another
hand to hold
another bulb to link,
to fill the vacant space:
it’s just another star down the rabbit hole.