Beautiful Violence/Violent Beauty

He pings her, “Date tonight?”

She starts getting ready immediately
because she needs a long time to get ready,
though she has been getting ready for this moment for years.

In past lives, she wore brass rings around her neck
and bound her feet, becoming beauty.

For more than 20 years, she has been bleaching her skin,
letting it percolate her pores to flow into her bloodstream,
trying to turn blood white, becoming white.

For more than 15 years, she has been starving herself,
to stay thin, bone and skin, reducing hips, forgetting
the purpose of wide hips, groping for thigh-gap,
forcing herself to throw up food, becoming anaemic.

For more than 10 years, she has been
noosing a hair on her upper-lip with a spit-wet thread yanking it off its roots, then repeating for each hair, waxing eyebrows, legs, hands, stomach, back, subjecting her bikini area to a laser, becoming frog.

Five years back, she had breast implants, went under the knife, plumped up her lips, becoming barbie.

Today, she shampoos her hair with parabens, clogs her pores with phthalates, conceals her flaws with traces of asbestos, shadows her eye with coal tar, polishes her nails with formaldehyde, and colours her lips with lead, becoming beautiful.

And, when she meets him, in her figure-hugging red dress, she asks him hesitantly, “Do I look alright?”