Your daughter thinks she is ugly.
Thinks her breasts are swollen to the point of ripe fruit
and no one will ever get lost in the forest between her legs.
She doesn’t understand that the blood coming from inside her
is war paint or that there is an entire universe spinning in her belly.
She thinks a red mouth and eyes lined with kohl
would make her beautiful, that she is too soft
and a man needs to roughen her edges like a whetstone.
Your daughter doesn’t know that some days she will feel like sawdust
because she is being carved from something more
and growing pains just mean more room to love.
She thinks she is ugly, so she doesn’t realize
an entire city is being built between her bones,
while all the ruins of Atlantis are sinking inside her heart,
and one day they will learn to float.
That is beautiful.
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Ugly
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