They say a child can swim
in the veins of a blue whale,
that the vessels are
just big enough for the
slender body of a little girl.
I would have fit perfectly,
thin and small as I was,
light enough to be blown over
by breezes,
willowy and weightless and swaying
with a body like a dying wildflower.
My ribcage was delicate enough
to be played like a harp,
my skin soft enough
to have been made from feathers,
just light enough to walk on water,
this girl of glass
with limbs like the silver rods of windchimes,
wrists sharp and curved as if
they had been cut from diamond,
shoulder blades prominent enough
to be mistaken for angels’ wings
my skin was made of stained glass,
remember,
a collarbone that looks like
it’s been lifted from my chest and
ankles curved like the wings of butterflies,
a crystal figurine with
an hourglass waistline,
always just a little too fragile
for her liking
after all, who could possibly
love the girl who
can be broken with just one touch,
a girl with cobwebbed cracks
spreading over her skin like tear tracks.
I was afraid of being dainty,
not wanting to be so fragile
that I would fall in love quickly
and fall apart even faster,
so instead I tried to show them
how there were fires seething
in the opals of my eyes
tried to prove that even stained glass
must be cut and fused and burned
before it can be made pretty.
I never understood how the embers
smouldering in my mouth
went unnoticed
but my flower petal bones
were seen
and touched
and gathered into posies when
all I wanted was to become
more fire than I was glass,
wishing away the damn lightness
that made them compare my arms
to willow tree branches,
just wanting them to
give weight to my voice
give my body just a little more weight
build me out of something stronger
than glass and ivory and porcelain –
and eventually, they did.
I am not a glass girl anymore.
There is nothing fragile about me
and I thought I would like being
less likely to blow away in the wind
like silver-dressed dandelion seeds,
but it is only now
in the almost absence of hollow bones
and jawlines curved like crescent moons
that I remember how much
my lightness has always suited me.
Perhaps that is why lately
I have taken to writing poetry
on an empty stomach at midnight,
waiting until I am swooning
with blurriness
before I allow myself to eat,
drinking water from wineglasses
to fill the hunger
and aching
to be weightless enough to fly again,
wondering
why I never did notice how
the transparency of my glass skin
must have made my veins
look like Arabic calligraphy
on parchment.
I am afraid I am losing
my angels’ wings,
afraid they will be cut
from my back like paper with scissors
or else fall apart,
feather by feather,
like flowers undressing themselves
as their petals begin to
crumble into the powder
that pearls are made of.
I am afraid I will open my eyes
one morning to discover
the fire I so lovingly wished for
in place of glass
has burned away all of my lightness,
leaving me with a body that
takes up too much space,
leaving me to taste ashes
on my tongue as if they are
snowflakes.
I am afraid one day I will
no longer be a girl of
windchime limbs
and dandelion feather hair
and stained glass skin
but instead be a woman
drowning in the heaviness
of blue whale blood,
not quite slender enough
to fit so perfectly into the
passages of their veins
anymore.
Written three years later, this poem is the second part of Angels’ Wings, a spoken word I wrote in Grade 10: https://violetsareblue.edublogs.org/2015/12/06/angels-wings/
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