It’s silly to me now
The time I spent training myself
To adorn in ways they asked of me, ways
That seemed inarguable and sacrosanct, yet
The voice rose from no lone nor supreme source.
It is partly my wrong to have placed those
Fashionable tones in such an order
On my plate and to have eaten them,
Wholeheartedly expectant of nourishment.

Those infectious suggestions of
Curled strands and trimmed outlines,
Distilled traits and clothing bait,
Burned skin kept thin and a curtain
To cover what is truly mine, tucked behind
A clear line in dim light –

These witless insistings
Were never uttered from my bones.
My flesh came forth without a list
Of how I could best fit it, only drove
Life into limbs I was
Already fitted in.
Those demands never sparked
A fire inside my furnace, only
Stole from that which keeps me burning
For true things and tiny, unknown springs.

From inside, I hear more beautiful voices
That sigh and sing forms into being from
Places of unabashed inspiration –

They are the humming variety of
The sound that takes place in me
Which wells and swells and tells me
Stories of all it finds peaceful and lovely
Without and within me.