There is a woman in my mind whose
shell grows and crumbles, collapses
and is reborn
endlessly. A statue, a castle
in some ancient land
that was first etched on archaic blueprints and
forgotten by its creators before I
was even born into this world, new,
pure expectation and potential
while she, she
was already solidified
somewhere in the expanse
of my mind.

(Glance of the under-sides of leaves,
cool-green veins through an
electric lime expanse, outlined
by summer sunshine. Wise
as the river which knows
where it goes. Confident
as the tree, spreading its branches
without shame, for all to see.
Such is she.)

A young girl grows, learns
to hate her body and herself more
with each passing year. She sees flaws where once
she only marveled at the power, the form
of the human body she
inherited from her progenitors.
For far too long, she
continues seeing potential, will
always imagine the shell around her that
she will grow into, doubtlessly, oh the woman she
deserves to be! This
flabby and incapable form will be
replaced by something--

(Motherly. The taking into
warm arms, strong, safe, secure, soaking into
the skin as if the water
from her womb: she will
absorb your sorrows, your fears, and will
replace it with her boundless
Love. Her love. Of you, of herself
of her belief
that all in this universe is originally
True, created as a result of Good
coalescing into human form. She will believe, oh she will believe
in you.)

There is a body now. A body
that shakes and shivers, that marinates
in its own hatred. It lies
within its creation, its
decisions not to
take care of itself, refine itself into something
beautiful, strong, pure, perfect. No, it won't
carefully sculpt itself by tearing away its own flesh
to form the fashionable face
until it is something beautiful, unreal, until it paints
the carved remains
into a living masterpiece.
Like the other girls do.
Like the other girls do.
It abhors its own grotesqueness. It
can feel its inlaid ugliness
like a slime that is smeared, like weight
that hangs and forms contours
where there should be straight lines, forms
bulges within what should be supple.
It
considers what it would give
to be
like Her.

(Eve of the apple, Diana
of the beauty, Jane of the independence and
pure Rogue who cannot be held,
cannot be
made to be anything but Herself. Oh,
Eve in the garden
so unattainable through her
lack of defined fault. Through her two dimensional
caricature. Her form, perfection. Her
hair streaming
and gorgeous...)
....I have only just begun to accept
that I can never
be her.
That I am beautiful
in my black holes of eyes, in my
crater-marked skin, in my
firwood bark hair, straight
as its trunk. That I, that I
am the large width of my thighs, the
curled toes that bespeak fragility, that are just
the beginning of the mimicry
of a doll's small limbs. That simultaneously I
am the storm you weather, I am the ignorant
natural disaster that will tear
through your life, through your vision, that
will interrupt your day with a wicked smile and a
wicked glance of too-dark eyes
and apologize.

For just as I wish to be she--
an impossibility, a goal made of
a nonexistent person who has never truly
understood the day-to-day handling of mistakes, of human
unaccountability-- I just as much
know
I am a paradox, the most
volcanic silence
and the
kindest calamity
you will ever know.