by 
This meme invites a poem
of questions
with few answers.
Jane
She stands in a field
framed in soft focus
Hallmark placidity.
Gauzed. Shadowed.
An ideal that everyone knows
does not exist except in
art or advertisement.
She is not whole.
She has no face.
She is fragmented.
A stranger’s hand has circumscribed her body.
Like a beef chart
arrows point to her body parts
tiny messages, hand-written
tell us
she is nice
and worthy of our support.
But what does this mean?
Are her breasts her “trusted friend”?
How is reading connected to pregnancy?
How is she hiding her pregnancy of
shame and distress?
Certainly not with bindings and loose clothes.
The cause of her shame protrudes from her body like
a beach ball
Is her shame the act of sex or
the baby that will emerge soon
from her body?
Was Hester Pryne shamed by Pearl
or by her community?
You tell her: “giving life is beautiful”
that she loves her child.
You tell her and us : she loves her child
but will kill it
or at best discard it
unless…unless
you intervene.
You tell her: “giving life is beautiful”
Yet you wrap her and her child in shame and secrecy.
Fashion it.
Manipulate it.
Was shame even real
or was it something else
turned to shame
when you promoted shame
to her?
Invented it.
Invented Jane.
A romantic idyll
to fulfill your purpose?
____________
Cross-posted on The Daily Bastardette
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