yesterday the man said

i was old enough

to still be a pretty girl,

so i decided i was old enough to

started building an altar

of things i bow down to.

he is not one of them.

a candle of promising to never

close my eyes near an open flame.

a photo of the girl i used to be

with some victim edited out;

praise the cloudy future

that i am perspective for her.

a stone of cold sharp jagged angry

tumbled into a landscape i want,

shining in rains praying growth,

slicing in showers sneaking erosion.

a mat weaved out of anyone who believed

they were more my foundation

than me.

when i couldn’t hear the man the first time

and he told me i needed a hearing aid,

i scorched his sandy hands into glass

and held it up to my face

to remind me that:

he’ll call me a pretty girl like that’s all i am.

then he’ll leave,

telling himself i was too deaf to hear

him try to shrink me

and fit me in his pocket.

too deaf to hear that it didn’t work,

and pretty girl is burning higher than ever,

looking right at her candle

with her eyes wide open.