String Doll because the last time I saw them, the last time I truly saw them, was when we used to be friends. If I could have his attention for even just a half a second, I would ask him why he hides his incredible eyes from me. If he could have his own choice and not have to succumb to the pressures of high school, if he could have anyone, would he glance my way, at the sweet girl from church who doesn’t do sex and drugs and alcohol? I would ask him what he didn’t see in me that he saw in countless other girls who actually enjoyed breaking his heart. I see him and I see memories of a friendship doomed before it started; a kid like him and a kid like me don’t often become friends outside of Disney Channel movies. If anyone should be bitter, it should be me. And yet, somehow, Whenever I pass him in the hallway every couple days, I find it curious that he is always the one who looks away.
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By Emily LaLiberte Self-commandments become etched in breath on a bathroom mirror As a girl with yarn hair hugs a too thin waist, watching intently the way her spine, Bent in, spun with twine would poke through sallow skin. I guess this is what you get when you count your blessings and calories. String doll, I wrote this to show you the waking nightmares of Hat you can’t see happening to the temple that is your body, Not open for reconstruction. You can’t cover your tracks with these ‘half-truths’ spun into your arms Which tell a story of a cold scale which you use to weigh yourself like ham at a deli. Not when you shout it from the rooftops that you’re too that to be beautiful. And, get this, you always wear you progress like some sort of sick badge of self-mutilation, Another day which you mark on the calendar, One day, two days, three days, And you haven’t eyed that cupboard that you ate out of like a pig From a trough all those years ago. That’s your success story, you say, that you were able to overcome fatness And become an example for all those girls with thinspirations as high as skyscrapers. You break your mother’s weepy heart with the constant stream of questioning That leaves your yarn lips: ‘Mama, I know you’re tired from working all day, And you’ve heard this a thousand times before, But when will I be beautiful like you? When will I stop hating what I see in a reflection? When will I be myself ?’ But, while you break the hearts of some and inspire others, you cannot deny That your life is a balancing act, a battlefield where the matter between life and death Is held up between a thigh gap And the way your mother prays, tear-struck For the day when you’ll stop bowing down to a porcelain bowl. No insurance for that. So, follow, Vanity Fair like the bible 13
