Shape of You (spoken word poem)
- Erin Anastasia
- Feb 20, 2017
- 2 min read
Updated: Dec 29, 2021
“Do you think I’m beautiful?” she asked.
He stood there, tall and proud and answered.
“You are… but…”
BUT.
He says it like a man with too much power.
Like a man who likes his woman controlled.
Three letters.
And suddenly this female stumbles.
She shrinks into her body.
Rips pieces of flesh.
Carves meat off her bones.
Hides her hips.
There is too much to hold
Too little to hold
Not enough to touch
Not enough.
She is not enough.
After constant “buts”
He has built her a house of insecurities
And handed her the key
He has broken her to the point
She does not know
She can lock herself out, instead of in.
Somewhere there is a girl with hair she thinks is shiny
Hips she thinks is curvy
Legs that have a lot to hold
Big brown beautiful eyes
She wears a smile
A smile that doesn’t know the words
Vicious
Social standards
Objects
She is innocent and good
For that
She is the prey.
And so she meets the wolves who toy with her
Circle her
Taunting her
And she stands up at first
Shaky, but she does.
They keep circling.
Snapping their soul ripping teeth
Until her worth is shredded
Laying around her like a pool of blood
Blood that can never return to a body.
Her body.
The flesh that these wolves have destroyed.
She can no longer look at herself in the mirror.
It is now dead hair
Flat chest
Bony legs
And lost eyes.
It is just like the wild.
These wolves have killed.
Have buried a body without burying a body.
Somewhere
A woman births her boy
Her body is beautiful
Her body has held the cord to a life for nine months
Her body has stretched, pulled and pushed.
Her body brings two eyes, ten fingers, ten toes, and a beating heart.
A beating heart.
Pulsing.
Like the way her minds beats with doubt
Afraid her husband will look at her body with rejection.
That body that has stretched, pulled, and pushed.
He will look at her like someone who has not brought his own blood to life
Like magic
Because in that moment she is stardust and comets
But they will not know this
Because all she wonders is that she has brought another male to this world
Who might one day
One day
Look at a woman the way his father looked at her.
Somewhere
There are women who look at their daughters
Who know of the wolves first hand.
And soon these daughters will grow
But their mothers have made warriors out of them
Who have told them
Your soul is the ocean
Fierce and gentle
Your body is this earth
Created from dust, storms and billowing winds.
Like hunters
With bodies of all forms.
These daughters enter the world
They meet their wolf
But this creature doesn’t know
Their mothers have made warriors of them
And so, she says to the wolf
“I will find these graveyards you have laid.
I will build bonfires from the words you have spoke
And like the phoenix
She will rise from the ashes
And I will tell her;
Her first mistake
Was asking
If she was beautiful.”
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