Beautiful Girl

Beautiful Girl

I am beautiful.

Bones of chalky ivory with delicate dips and slopes

Like tiny snow-covered prairies. These pearly branches

Tied up with ligaments and swaddled in muscle, all of it

Glazed in pale pink satin. My heartbeat pulses beneath my neck

In time with the rise and fall of my ribs.

This organic machine is delicate, like stained glass

Windows or china teacups.

I’m built to break.

Layers of skin stolen by the sidewalk and asphalt,

Cuts that sew themselves up and leave scars,

Post it note reminders of my fragility.

Bruises tinted purple, blues, yellows and greens,

Like minute nebulas leaked beneath my skin.

Chemicals that whirl in my brain in mad patterns,

Exploding in clouds like ink droplets in water,

Wild and crazy and imbalanced, reminding me

How shattered I can be.

Muscles that twist and knot, tear and pull

Until they ache and quiver and burn.

But I heal, and so I am beautiful.

Aren’t I?

Or is my beauty to be based on my compliance,

The exploitation of my delicacy,

The curvature of my body rather than

The curvature of my battle scars.

Perhaps the beauty is in the symmetry of my face,

The proportion of my bones and tissues,

My angles and contours in all the right places.

Maybe my beauty is in the cadence of my voice,

Soft and lilting, never questioning.

 Possibly the allure is in the red of my lips,

The brightness of my eyes, or the rosiness of my cheeks;

Maybe it’s measured by the length of my eyelashes?

It could be that I’m beautiful when I smile and giggle

At the jokes someone else makes.

Maybe I’m beautiful when someone tells me I am.

Or maybe that’s bullshit.

Perhaps I am beautiful in my humanness,

My ability to think and breathe and curse,

The fact that my heart beats so rhythmically

And my synapses fire so gracefully

And I push forward so powerfully,

The fact that I get slashed and the wound seals up like an envelope.

Maybe I’ve learned that I am beautiful by existing,

And no one can cut me down when I always grow back,

When I always heal even if I’m built to break.

The scorched summer concrete used to burn and scrape my feet.

“Don’t worry,” Mama said. “When you’re old like me

And your feet are thick and calloused it won’t hurt anymore.”

Now my feet are calloused and I can’t feel a thing.