Lily at 14

 

Lily lies on the earth more lightly than morning,

open to the newness of this dawning day.

Her young breasts and thighs soften, they sigh

over the lost angularity of her body.

Blood weaves a lullaby into her womb,

teaching her to dance with the moon,

to ebb and to flow with the seasons, with tides.

A woman's hand cradles her head.

A woman's hand on her diaphragm

rises and falls with the rhythms of breath.

A woman's leg stretches luxuriously out from her hip,

but somewhere in her girlhood, a child's foot

tucks itself in under her knee, as if seeking

shelter within the woman she is becoming.

"To be immortalized as a teenager...I can think of nothing worse at this point in my life. Yet the question, ' Why should I do this?' never entered my head. Not once. I did it so that when other girls my age look in the mirror every morning, they will not see what I see, they will see what you see."

-Lily, age 14