She was a child wild
wearing a white dress,
galloping through fields of unrest,
inspiring anxious warheads,
for a hot second.
Off to the next.
She was
anxious like a feather
caught in a breeze,
far from that child
that minded none
the weeds.
Backhand compliments
more potent than
misogynic critiques.
She was Marilyn Monroe.
Where was Norma Jean?
Living in a man's dream,
pinned up in a
concrete bunker,
a porcelain poster
tearing each time
she wasn't taken seriously,
or spent nights
alone aside a dusty phone,
with no home but
Norma Jean,
Marilyn's martyr
long at peace.
This started as a poem about feeling far from yourself, and turned into a poem about how abiding by other people's expectations corrupt our true selves.
