Why must beauty be gentle?

Soft, pure, pastel, and delicate…

Can I not be striking, spectacularly singular?

Purple and white, a brilliant streak of energy

Tearing the sky in two and bolting down the sides.

I want to be a blazing fire; an inferno that burns away,

Not into a temperate pool of gray haze and nothingness,

But into incandescent embers

And anxious tinder that awaits re-ignition.

Behold the rose I grasp in my hand.

Bear witness the blood of my prickled palms.

Would you not call it,

The violent splendor of red floral flesh

Dewed by my freckling vein, beautiful?

 

I have known the symphonic cacophony of silence,

But must my spirit be quiet to hold value?

I have seen my shadow emerge sepia toned

By the streetlight. There at my feet I have seen the proof

That I am not only a woman, but within this skin lies a lioness.

Tomorrow the pride I swallowed for the sake of a whisper

Will crack open my chest and roar.

Howl, thunder, hurricane winds waltz

Lulling me into a dervish amongst the timpani-d raindrops.

 

Can you not see that obedience is not inherent in my sex?

I kneel because my thick thighs hold the strength to stand.

I bend, bow, and bare my shoulders when his self-control disintegrates

So that he might borrow mine.

Can you not understand that I trust him to break me into all the right pieces

And then stand guard over the fragmentation

Rather than sweep me away with indifference?

To heel, submit, give in, hand over control

Is to trade my need to free fall carelessly

For the cocoon of a secure masculine embrace.

Look closely at the arms I bare.

Take a turpentine dipped rag to your mind

And make visible the gold marbled evidence

Of where I have already resealed my porcelain shards

Into a single resilient spine

Now tell me I am worse for the breaking.

No,

Like the sharp crack of a whip that quiets my mind

I am stunning, bold, a flash of red.

I am not just pretty.

I am beautiful.