Treasure | Teen Ink

Treasure

March 24, 2015
By radioactivegalaxies BRONZE, Port Aransas, Texas
radioactivegalaxies BRONZE, Port Aransas, Texas
3 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Everything is changing, and there's nothing I can do. My world is turning pages while I am just sitting here."
Anael, Supernatural


Treasure and poison--
Glinting gold seeping into her veins.

 

Crimson life drip
                         drip
              drip
                       drip
          dripping
away.

 

Inhale silver--
Coat her lungs with platinum
Infuse her heart with diamonds

 

Crying sapphires
                 turquoise
     tanzanite
                        tourmaline
 tortured treasure.

 

Pierce her skin with precious metals

 

Pluck away the silken strands of hair
                  bleach it
         wax it
                  dye it.

 

Perfectly sculpted poison
Scantily clad in slinky obsidian 
Sipping fruity blends
Teetering on daggers
Flashing dazzling opal
Dancing rubies
Glinting green emeralds

 

Fatal beauty
Ornately adorned
Unconditionally adored
Until she opens her ruby red lips
And speaks.

 

Out tumbles:
                      words
        ideas
                thoughts
                              meaning
          intelligence.

 

How dare she be more
She cannot be more than her beauty
More than the metal pierced into her skin
More than the gold running through her capillaries
Or the drinks she sips at oh so delicately.

 

For her to be more is for them to be less
For them to be inadequate
              wrong           misogynistic
       immoral         unjust
                 ignorant        bigoted

an abomination.


For her to be human is for them to be a monster.
For her to breathe air into her lungs,
Bleed red rather gold,
Speak words of meaning,
For her to be intelligent
     strong            beautiful
  funny       outspoken        confident
          honest      comfortable      sweet
caring      passionate       professional
anything that challenges their ideas?

 

That’s just unheard of
        taboo
              restricted
  banned           wrong
        rejected.

 

She speaks and they look disgusted.
Revolted.
They look at her like she’s an alien
Like she doesn’t belong anywhere.
Like she doesn’t deserve to breathe.

 

She takes a deep breath of thousand year old star dust and comes to a realization.
One thousands of years in the making.
They are the abomination,
not her.

 

She will never deny a person the way they do
Never speak the way they demand
Never be the precious bejeweled princess they crave
Never be the delicate flower to save
Never will she need them
And never will she want an abomination.

 

She’d rather wait a thousand lonely years
To be loved for herself.
Not for the liquid gold coursing through her arteries,
Or the platinum in her lungs,
The diamonds pressed into her heart,
The silver she breathes,
Or the precious metals sunken into her soft skin.

 

She’s made of lovely things.
Star dust and skin cells,
Blood and chemicals,
Tendons and bones.
None of those are the most important however.
Strip away all the time, effort, and money put into her ethereal look
And there’s a little girl waiting to be freed.

 

She sheds the obsidian dress and wipes off the makeup.
She washes her hair free of the chemicals and her skin of the perfume.
She cleans her skin with a purpose.
She’s no longer a glittering gemstone set in precious metal for display.
Today,
She is truly free.


The author's comments:

When I wrote "Treasure" it was a very superficial idea. I knew I wanted to comment on materialism and particularly in women, but I took it a step deeper with this poem. I included society in on the picture. I wanted to give an idea of how the world around us helps to shape us into these tortured women. And while the subject of the poem is obviously more well off and princess-y it's only one expample of the materialism that we learn from a very early age and how it affects one woman who breaks herself free.


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