A customary place. A solitary place. A place where 
expectations are not met. No artifacts of beautiful. 
Only artifacts of honor and friendship. No goals to 
meet. No gold to discover. Life. It is our 
perseverance.
Sketched Faces.
Short legs. Tall legs. Thin Legs. Fat Legs. Skirts. 
Dresses of many colors. Don't forget to light up your 
hair with ribbons and bows. Shave. Don't shave. Don't 
forget to smile pretty for the camera and always say 
cheese. Be who you they want you to be and not who you 
are.
Why don't you love me for who I am?
My voice has been spent. I've worked myself into 
frienzes of not being good enough for you to love. 
You're rendered me powerless as I search for my own 
kind of freedom, my own kind of personal talent.
Fill your pockets with mother's words, the words of our 
elders that called us into freedom before we enveloped 
our pits with compacts and lipsticks and pills. Pills 
to make you thinner, smarter, less pregnant. Pregnant 
with images of TV and magazines. Cutouts of our future. 
Future lost in timelines of chokers, corsets, hotpants, 
and mini-skirts. Cut off our circulation. Draw up our 
bones. Bending and breaking our hands hurt from 
wringing and arms longing for healing. Hold us. We are 
voices of a lost generation made to feel ashamed of who 
we are. Blame her for being pretty. Blame her for not 
being pretty enough. What is enough? Fighting. Losing 
one another's battles. Projecting ourselves farther 
from the center, the center of ourselves, the thing 
that makes us women.
We hate.
We bleed for next generations who will bury our 
polished bodies and take our places. Lost our mantra. 
Hear our song.
Forgiveness is not in your vocabulary. You call 
yourself a support system. You don't even know what 
that means. You continually shut the door in my face. 
Over and over breaking my heart and breaking my 
strength. You don't know how to be yourself. You join 
the others.
We've read between the lines. For every glance we feed 
to them, we walk away with a higher self standard. Lets 
walk away from this. Lets not pay attention. If we cut 
off their power, our standards (on beauty) will fall. I 
won't become your billboard. I will not advertise. 
Beauty lies in our nature not merchandise. Every single 
day corporate suggestions try to define our beauty with 
their commercial media influence. We don't want what 
you offer anymore. We took what's real.
Our society doesn't know it's sick, basing our lives on 
sexual politics