I found out being beautiful and strong is impossible.
She is made of glass,
you made her out of glass.
But she never wanted
to be made up of angles and lines.
Jagged pieces of
rich vibrancy,
fused together,
framed by fragile copper,
cathedral and opalescent,
cut and ironed
carefully crafted
to create the colourful mosaic of glass.
But she is terrified,
(because one touch and she will shatter.)
She lives among the stone arches of the church,
and when the light charges through
colorful sharded panes,
she is animated with the changing of the light.
Her patterns wandering across the floor…
lost, scared, terrified,
(because one touch and she will shatter.)
Ribs make a staircase up to her flat chest.
Shoulder blades poke out of her back
like shards of mirror,
casting reflections she never wanted to see—
reflections of a skeleton.
Flesh of fragments is
stabbing her, kissing her with
lips of broken glass and barbed wire.
A girl whose wrists are sharp and thin,
whose wrists are damp and chipped
from the wrathful presence of your fingers
always wrapped around the perimeter
of her limb to see
just how small and fragile it is!
To marvel at the stained glass
like she’s on display,
like you all want her breakability!
But who wants to be broken?
Leaded into wistful walls of worship,
doomed to bend light and capture memory!
Transparent, thin, breakable, brittle.
And she wants to shout at you:
“Get your hands the hell off of me,
because being raw-boned doesn’t make me weak.
Even though I’m in the tenth grade and I weigh seventy pounds,
even though if I stand on you, you won’t feel a thing,
I will make you feel a thing!
I will fortify my glass
with layers of clear, shatter-proof fire cooled
into sheets of resistance.”
The fire of the glass
smoulders inside the lamination.
Through it, you can still see
colours that come to life
in reinforced strength
and frozen beauty.
Just because you made her out of glass
doesn’t mean she can’t be strong;
even though shoulder blades
cut out from a back
that should be softer, smoother,
even though they look like shards of mirror
or jagged stones…
they also look like angels’ wings.
I found out being beautiful and strong is possible.
This poem is a Spoken Word piece, and began as an insecurity about the angular and thin structure of my body. Right now, the world is focussed on being thin. It is a desirable and coveted trait by many. But in my experience, being thin also means that people see you as weak. There may be an element of beauty to a slender body structure, but why can I not be beautiful and strong? The message of this poem is that being thin and ‘breakable’- being made out of stained glass- doesn’t have to put one in a vulnerable position. We can fortify our stained glass with bulletproof layers, so that the beauty and fire inside is never lost, but is always protected.
Please see the following link for an audio recording of this Spoken Word poem: https://paperroses.edublogs.org/2016/01/14/angels-wings-audio-recording/
Citations:
Connelly, Andy. “Heavenly Illumination: The Science and Magic of Stained Glass.” The Guardian. © 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited, 29 Oct. 2010. Web. 6 Dec. 2015. <http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2010/oct/29/science-magic-stained-glass>.
“Stained Glass Art Work.” Fine Art America. Copyright © 2015 FineArtAmerica.com. Web. 6 Dec. 2015. <http://fineartamerica.com/groups/stained-glass-art-work.html>.
“Broken Glass.” LoveThisPic. Web. 6 Dec. 2015. <http://www.lovethispic.com/image/48479/broken-glass>.
