Writings and rants

Scrub the face

Tweeze the hair, Tease the hair

Pore the foundation

Plump the lips and curl the lashes

Brushes brushes brushes

            Mascara

                        Eye shadow

                                    Powder

                                                Lipstick, lip-gloss

Bronzer? Lightener?

What’s your flaw?

                                             What?

You don’t want to be an Easy, Breezy, Beautiful, Cover Girl?

You may not want it, but you need it.

We know what’s best for you.

       This is how it’s done. This is how it is.

Why oh why did we get rid of the corset?

            Perfect design, perfect product

                                    Broke a rib? It is just that much easier to get into a smaller size

                                    Hard to breathe? Harder to talk. Harder to be heard. 

Ugh, how can you look at yourself without your face? You have bushy eyebrows, a couple zits- oh my god is that some blackheads too? You have freckles and your skin tone is all wrong. Can you even look at your reflection?

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

ME.

Not some Poked, Prodded

Taped and Glued

Stitched

Paint Slathered,

Edited, Virtual, Unreal

Unattainable

Image in a Magazine.

Maybe she’s born with it? Maybe it’s air brushing …

Maybe it’s surgery…

I doubt it is only Maybelline.

        -Linnea Barnett on the Beauty Standard

******************************************************************

Cruise

As western music fades 
And white glass lowers
Beside me
So do your eyes
Into black gold
With the shine
But not the worth 

I recall reports
Splattered blood
Decapitated
Lost, ruined
Forever 

You declare me 
Bait, to call to that animal in
You, that one that
Crushes between iron
And fists
Much like machinery
But lacking that disgusting
Meaning 

You agress 
Beside me, I ignore it
My usual slow toes 
Fasten, and pick up speed
As though on a runway 
A plane 
Heading into that black space
That iminent loss of myself 
It is unavoidable 

Your hands gather
On the slick sides of your car 
Rubbing its metal, and calling
The wheels are bored
They are bored with me
They roll in the gutter
I walk, I hasten 

Then you get up
Out of your whistle
You reveal your soldier
Body, as it is clammed with sweat
And strange
I wish, for a second, to be limbless
Something you’d be disgusted by
I hate myself
And spoil my stomach for nerves 

I hear the slumped clomp of your shoes
As they pick up the past on their
Soles, soulesss you move in
Not discouraged by my fear 
Not sickened with yourself
For approaching someone who’s 
Sped up in an attempt to 
Escape you 

At once, I smell your triumph 
It clouds me, and I feel lost
I see the road ahead dissolve 
Into a thousand of a million women
Disintegrated
From bones, into flesh
I suddenly am able to feel death 

Once you reach me
I have stopped
My usual slow toes 
That bred fast ones
Out of terror 
Have stopped

But you feel no hurt from this 

-Leila

******************************************************************