Deborah Schwartz
(for my nieces)

Men will call you beautiful and treat you like gold tassels.
You will feel defiled, filled up, subservient, ashamed.

Your mask is painted, as Sappho once sang.
Still there will be a need to be not-beautiful.

Even when your softness attracts birds nibbling on breadcrumbs.
It will be too much to balance the world.

You’ll let it tip. The world, it will creep up
to your fingers. I hope you let yourself touch it.

I hope you will not be able to help how you love what you touch.

Deborah Schwartz is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Wind of the House, Voice of the Stream, of the Dream That you Dream, While We Turn You Around (Kattywompus Press, 2022,) and A Girl Could Disappear Like This (Kattywompus Press, 2019.) She is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, MA, and lives with her wife on the Boston Harbor in East Boston across from the tall buildings that make up the city. http://deborahcecileschwartz.com/.