Laborare est orare

Beauty

She wanted to be beautiful

So she watched the ballet

She read poetry

And listened to songs sung by Disney’s Princesses

And she fiilled her room with glittering frivolities

and strung it up in fairy lights

But when the ballerinas went home and put on sweats

And the poems grew old on her tongue

And the Princesses became symbols of the Patriarchy

And her birthday money was spent

and her fairy lights burnt out

She was in the dark.