When round and full, her silver face
Swims into sight, and lights all space
—Sappho
I wanted to be everything the mirror denied. A real beauty,
untouchable as the moon, the same one Shakespeare, Shelly
and Sappho saw, the same one my father carved through at night
on the still waters of Prince William Sound, his silent oars
like silver spoons in cream. I wanted to be just beautiful enough
to be a source of pride, cold as winter’s end, asexual,
more Artemis than Aphrodite, gleaming white and sealed
as a marble tomb. But I was plain, ordinary, clumsy with my mouth,
my face an early etching of a lesser artist. My father argued
if anyone called me pretty. My mother too. Sex was an envelope
to open in secret, a flashlight to hold to my palm—a way in. When
I was locked out of my house, I could give a hand job and get a ride
to the beach. I could make out by the waves as if I mattered. A girl in
a puddle of belonging, in a simulacrum of love, because I put out.
