Grandmother Says If I Were Twenty I'd Burn My Fucking Bra

It’s the only time I’ve ever heard her swear. She shows me the indents
on her shoulders from bra straps holding heavy breasts all those years

rubs the depressions like they’re tiny animals. She’s sitting at her dressing
table. I’m fourteen, wearing her pearls and blue eye shadow, massaging

her neck as we look in the mirror. She laughs for swearing, grabs my hand,
caresses the inside of my palm. Crazy what we do to be pretty.

She’s trying to protect me. Burn your bra—only I don’t need one. My breasts
have stopped growing. My periods have stopped. I’m so hungry, I’m carving

holes inside my gut for the ballet girls to admire my skinny thighs, flat stomach.
I’m fourteen, standing behind my grandmother in the mirror, trying to disappear.

Alicia Elkort’s poetry has appeared in AGNI, Arsenic Lobster, Fickle Muses, Georgia Review, Heron Tree, Menacing Hedge, Rogue Agent, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Tinderbox Poetry Journal and many others and is forthcoming in Black Lawrence Press.  Alicia's poems have been nominated for the Orisons Anthology (2016) and the Pushcart (2017). She lives in California and will go to great lengths for an honest cup of black tea and a cool breeze.