“Men do not bend over backwards to please me.
Nothing you have ever heard is true.
They would have you believe in the sway of my hips
like a siren song.
Some charlatan claimed to see the birth of Venus
in the lay of my thighs. Roses in my cheeks.
They say they dedicate their work to me.
They say they dedicate their lives to me.
But these are wholly foolish things.
This is the truth of it. Here it is with verity:
They break over their pens and their clay and their stone,
falling for the image on the easel.
They like me at a distance: elusive, radiant, mysterious.
A mess of legs and mouth. A silhouette. An idea.
A design of their own making.
Not a woman who talks too much in her sleep.
They call on me for inspiration, but nobody chasing the muse
has ever actually put down the pen long enough
to come and find me.
It is nothing if not lonely. It is nothing if not unkind.
If I had my way: every bit of marble cracked,
every inkwell run dry, every metaphor cut down before its time.
The bottoms of my feet are black from running barefoot.
My mouth is lit like a forge.
I am worth so much more
than another couple of good goddamned lines.”
-Trista Mateer
“You saw her a hundred times, but not once did you look at her.” – Gabriela Mistral
Leave a Reply