Romance Spurns

Artwork by Joanna Chen, staff artist

Romance spurns the heroine,

and uplifts the hopeless creature

with slight, delicate hands webbed

with raw, raging love.

Women are reckoned to be “monsters;”

it is not only frankenstein’s bride with

a body babied by a man’s bias or

a brain brewed with pure artifice.

Cannot our darkness

come not from deathly glamour

come not as lancelot’s lost lover,

but become of the beast

beneath the heart?

Feminine is said to be strong

by first being weakened. Well,

it's no wonder we wish to be villains.

Villains swallow blank space.

They write in bold, spill blood

by the surface of their tongues,

are beloved to the branches

which gave them splinters,

are noticed by the night skies

which let them soften,

are respected by the bodies

which they let burn.

Romance spurns the heroine

but fails to recognize that her emotions

can take hold as living, breathing cogency,

and not of suffering, behaving beauty

under paint, pen, and picture.

And is it so evil to be so held?