@ZARA | letter to an art form

Dear friend,

A while ago, my sister asked me what my three self-indulgent wishes would be - no charity, no selflessness, just a triple set of honest-to-goodness wants. I don't remember if I answered out loud, but I thought about it a whole lot and finally came to a decision encompassing all my most blatant insecurities, putting a mild resolve to all my flawed perceptions. The list was as follows:

1. An ACT score of 34
2. Acceptance to the Colburn school of music
3. The form and face of a Zara model.

Even now, writing this down seems utterly ridiculous if a bit melodramatic; even with a 32 and a music scholarship my adolescent inclinations toward perceived perfection have remained pretty much intact. The longing nearly ate me alive, but after spending a few months in rehab I got to thinking a lot about you; you and Lily and Lola and all the other teenage wonder-women representing some senior class of serendipity, looking pretty for a living and being chalked up to a fault. I don't care what your BMI is, love, but they don't seem to either and that's what worries me. So I just wanted to ask you,

What did it look like when you first walked into Los Angeles?

Was the skyline tinged with eggshell-white like it was for me, smoky at the center and reeking of cigarettes and celebrities? Did your ankles hurt in your stilettos when you stepped into the building with the big windows, eying the Starbucks across the street and wishing you knew another lonely stardom-seeking city slicker to talk to? Did you brush your teeth more than once in the morning, letting the listerine seep through your tongue like a revelation, staring down the mirror in a reflective contest of wills, terror and gratitude thriving as one in your skeletal structure?

Did it hurt, when they asked if you were fourteen? Did you wish you'd lived a bit longer?

Did you order the sandwich on rye bread instead of wheat and pick out the cheese with your black-painted nails, tipping the waiter with your card instead of cash and drawing in block letters on a cardboard-colored napkin? Did you leave half behind, love, and walk away hungry because this, this frame of yours, is now your paying job?

Are you afraid of the cameras? Do you sleep with sore eyebrows, sore from the frowning?

Does it hurt, when they ask about menstruation? Did it hurt to hear "ses jambes sont laids" behind the picture screen, to know they never guessed you too spoke French? Does it hurt to know your bones are breaking?

Does the makeup make it better?

You and I seem to visualize ourselves something akin to the end destination, a nirvana of the mind; a place embroiled with cinnamon scents and flannel sheets, shaved legs and lotion and running water and healthy vitals. Safe potassium levels and red blood cell count, a decent heart rate and blood pressure and a somewhat stable self-perception. We seem to see ourselves as impenetrable, a societal ideal defying odds and laws of physics in one, living the way Holocaust survivors died because we are the achievers, we are the founders, we are the transcenders of sad human necessity. When they found your skin searing with bruises they laughed at the thought of leukemia because you were "fragile" - they didn't know you were dying.

Everyone's dying, love.
But we're still pretty young.

I don't want us to become another number in a statistic; I don't want you to be valued solely for the length of your limbs and the prominence of your collarbones. I want them to listen to the way you laugh over vanilla bean frappuchinos and part your hair on the right, to know that you always sleep in earrings and cried the first time you read A Separate Peace. I want them to know that you peruse Italian philosophy and decorate your home with recycled magazine covers, that your first cat was named Fitzgerald after F. Scott and your brother is your best friend; that your shoes long for Tuscany and your heart belongs to Portland. I want them to know how many stars you've watched fall and how many reams of mascara you've gone through before wishing on an eyelash; I want them to know that you are alive and whole and human, not a pinprick on a map where a tack was removed - a whole world of potential in that tiny frame.

You are more than an emaciated body in a dress, love - don't forget.

Always,
Soph

(somewhat cathartic)

I was certain it would be obliterating, lavender dripping in droves from my graduation gown hem - how it would feel to walk in borrowed finery and let adolescence drip off, just like that --

"You know, I didn't ever really get that orange peel thing"

"Huh?"

"You know, where you peel it and it spells out your husband's name?"

"I just hate oranges."

My fingers are throbbing with octave twinges and my shin is bruised. I'm gaining a complacent kind of physical awareness, of the subtle greens in the veins under the skin of my hands and the calluses of the Korean aesthetician painting my toenails black. There are a whole lot of kind people in the world, actually, and I'm over here vibrating and appreciating them from a safe distance --

I guess the real question is what are we supposed to give the next generation? What're they even gonna think of us?

We tried, man. Some Bach just can't be played on a 15.5-inch.

serenity prayer

Blessed virgin, I've been eating roses
By your hedge grow. Mother
Mary in the morning
cutting crusts from salad plates -

you are the reason for my opalescence. 
I've spun the rug of crumpled wrappers 
and they shine like supernovas on your oyster shells -
coral-hot, they glisten. I am satiated
in your stark iridescence 

and you dress me in moonlight. A bride
of sweet, sweet apathy,
arrayed in spotless dishrag rays
I crumble, awed by your simplicity. 

You've crowned me in apple peels. 
Appoggiaturas unapologetic, we worship in wavelengths 
together, fourteen and trembling 
and skinny in our unburnt skin. Bless 

our fast, we pray
and coalesce my meal to your devotion. All these strings 
hung from your fingers strum me,
vilified -
a song of orcas
underneath an oil-spilled shore.

Dear Mother, you enthrone me 
in your loveliness eternally. May
canopies of full disclosure 
rest upon the both of us tonight 
as operatic crickets mourn 
the loss of freedom's breakfast.