Defining

If she throws her Self high to the storm,

roots willfully tearing,

the sharp snap-crackle of toppled expectations staccato her dissent,

and the flightless fingerprint bruises,

dark scuttlings that bore into her sleepless nights

beetling secret degradations deep to her pithy core,

all flee her broken canopy as she falls,

and falls,

and falls,

to the pine- softed floor of her true Mother's home...

If lichens cover her eyes,

her limbs fur and mushroom,

lips crack, sprouting tender new dreams,

raging her smile...

If she rises

newly finned and feathered,

moss-toothed,

twig-haired,

and the sway of her hips calls wolves to rest,

and her mouth breaks song-wild howls,

voicing hawk-shriek echoes over broken stone creeks,

and her ears fill in moonlit graces

as she moves like the promise of thunder...

If crawling eyes are blinded by her brilliant passage through

If her shape stays her own,

no longer needful of assessing the weight of her value

on the outrages of her sex

If men no longer stretch her skin to animal drumming,

paint her frame in crude mirrors

or lick their lips, swelling in anticipation of her arrival...

is She still beautiful?