Dying to Be Beautiful

Broken Somehow by Cristina Popa

“Beauty crowds me till I die...”  Emily Dickinson

Glamour and Vogue

paper her bathroom,

airbrushed perfection

preserved on glossy paper.

The running tap

drowns the sound

of her dinner swirling

in the porcelain bowl.

A freak show mirror

hides the promise

sixteen should hold,

only reflecting

acid-rotted teeth

behind pallid lips,

long-dead hollow eyes,

a 76 pound skeleton

wrapped in obese paranoia,

Dying to be beautiful.

A Helpful Hint

Photo from Google Images

For those young men seeking romance,
Good looks don't just happen by chance.
If you want to impress,
I cannot overstress:
Remember to pull up your damned pants!


~~~ This was written for the prompt from Imaginary Garden with Real Toads asking us to write about our pet peeve.  I can’t even begin to tell you how crazy sagging pants make me!  I’m also linking this up for Open Link Monday over at IGWRT since I’m just a wee bit late with this offering.

Fashionable Torture

File:Stilettoheels.jpg  from Wikimedia Commons

Cinderella was a masochist,
With feet trapped in unforgiving glass
Merely to curry favor with a prince.
The lesson remains unlearned,
We teeter about in stiletto heels,
Suffering the origami-like
Folding of flesh and bone
Just to satisfy the gods of fashion,
Our anguished steps inducing pain
In bodies shifted out of alignment,
Sadistic devices that would make
The Inquisitors of old envious.

What would they say to know
That five hundred years later
Half the populace
Volunteers for torture?


~~~~  This poem was written for a prompt from Imaginary Garden with Real Toads asking us to write about fashion.