"Song for Persephone"

Emily Bennett

...but you don't walk like a pretty girl: you wear button-down winter coats, you lean to one side with the weight of your bookbag, your shoes gather dirt that you never scrub off.

But you act like you don't have piano-key fingers and a guitar-string voicebox; you act like your hair isn't woven through with honey.

But you wear thin cotton bras made for ugly girls and you act ashamed of your size-twelve Marilyn-Monroe body.

But you act like you bleed the same blood as me, instead of pomegranate juice.

You walk like the weight you carry is anything other than beauty.