“You could be a model”
- Paul Wong
- Photo Illustration by BRETT MOUNTAIN/Daily
my mother consoled me
as she piled my thick, entangled
golden hair on top of my head.
A fluorescent green piece of paper sat
crumpled in my young hands.
It declared that I too
could be a flawless image of
beauty
if only I sent them a photo and
a hundred dollars.
Her bright sapphire eyes pierced
into the emerald ones she created in me,
that now glimmered
fighting against tiny drops of water.
“You could be a monster”
I thought as I looked at my
gawky reedish reflection
in the smooth lake of glass
beyond the thin, worried figure
perched in front of me-
a bird hovering over her young.
A repulsive monster with long yellow fangs
ready to destroy, starve tender
hungry flesh
as it feasted off visions of
slender beauty.
The monster is inside me.
It forces me to drop warm, gooey cookies
Run an extra mile at practice
Drink 8 bottles of water a day
Chain myself to the blinking, blood
Red
numbers of the scale.
It slowly became me.
Envy
Jealousy
Greed
The monster taunted the growing reed of a girl,
a pesticide
killing the one who loved to race sleek, strong horses through
billowing seas of wild waves of
green grass
and scale the rough bark of young apple trees.
She loved to pluck its tiny green rocks
to pelt the frustrating neighbor boys.
The boys were the monster:
staring at the pictures of those
models
with their waterfalls of silky hair
flawless porcelain skin
full red lips
thighs like straight twigs
She put a frail arm around me
shaky from all the black, bitter coffee
she loved, pulling me from imaginary
thoughts
of my cottage cheese thighs.
“Green bean”
she has always called me
when I was that girl.
Maybe
She was afraid
I would snap too.