She

It starts at eleven,
stripped to the world,
eyes unveiled, set to please.
She is just beginning to feel herself
be something else nice and polite,
a shape shifter in her own skin.
A vacancy at the core
of only what a girl can know.

When fate offers its hand
she grabs on and goes for the ride
in a garden with nothing blooming.
Diminished in the mirror,
acid rain on her face,
scraping skin on the way to
a doubt only a woman knows.

She listens to the songs boiling
and bubbling out of her throat,
reaching out an imperfect arm,
pushed back in private,
melted down in public.
She must be cheerful
as only a woman can be.

Now she's driving her pink car
with a dozen tattooes.
Her primal scream brings relief
from the Kristallnacht in her chest.
She can't be enough of a daughter,
wife, friend, mother, lover.
Enough of all a woman must be.

Painting by Norman Rockwell