Aphrodite, will you make me beautiful?
tried abcdalready tried; gave me raw oyst oysters
algae blue when I was a baby so I could throw up salty
innards We are both still sevent year old girls. She seventeen
naked eating every summer so she can swim and still be pretty
make I up for it her gluttonous daughter an sli ng over like this
body Goddess of love or beauty, I’d sacrifice mse Goddess
approval dNo one had had sex with Aphrodite when when
achingly to forget their mortality; be achingly human,
aware of the physical, so clos e to an that
mortality that th e. But she she is tangible
love s tatue, they only aaaaathat only a
fight backwhen it’s grabbed becau back
least it’s wanted. The differ ence alter
altar and alter is a closing of the tongue
silent for a storm whose light aaaaprayer
cuts cuts clear across my jaw and stomach
carves my flesh into marble with chisel marble
into cratered body and cast it into the the sea, body
ripples and how the body folds into itself. I never a itself
never running because my heart never slowed and I needed
heaving for the gasping before the heaving ocean grabbed ocean
I die. I die like I was born, glistening in lumpy pearls and glistening
time I can stand the test of time, every year the days me m get waning
wanting my stomach cannot keep up with the waning, theffffffff theto be
worshiped for a palpable body as if I were a goddess instead of a girl.
Myaan Sonenshein is a senior studying Creative Writing at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston who spends her time writing in coffee shops, training aerial arts, and thrifting. She has been previously published in Paper Crane Journal, jGirls Magazine, and Trailblazer Review.
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