Statues Don't Cry

There was once a statue made of marble, white as finely spun silk,

The face pure like honey and smooth like warm milk.

The hair a long braid hanging down on one side,

The waist quaint and narrow and the hips curvy and wide.

The statue woman was elegant and tall,

And on her cold body she wore nothing at all.

Looking into her eyes was like looking into the sea,

Did she have a mind at all? She longed to be free.

Because beneath the stone, she was all alone,

She’d live forever, never would she dry into bone.

Then one day lightning struck and she split into pieces,

All that was left were chunks of her fine curvy creases.

The town’s men came together to put her as one,

Touching every marble and crease until they were done.

Now her body is a puzzle made of shame and defeat,

And all in the process she lost her mouth and her feet.

Her eyes bone-dry faucets, her pupils ebony clear,

How she wishes she could taste the saltiness of a tear.

How does it feel like to raise a hand and touch a man’s skin?

Does it sting? Is he cold? How tough is the beard on his chin?

How does it feel to have a mother, a daughter, a friend?

What’s forgiveness? What’s love? Do shattered hearts mend?

These are the questions that flooded her sea eyes,

Her marble body cracking, she planned her good-byes.

Oh marble woman, that hollow, poor soul,

With no lips and chapped nails and in her stomach a hole.

And the men tried to fix the cracks but they wouldn’t fit,

She is a pile of debris on the sidewalk on which dog-owners spit.

Oh marble woman, all that is left of her is one eye,

And her shin, half a breast, and her slender white thigh.

No one stops by her grave and no one remembers her name,

For she never lived, never loved and never felt power or shame.

Now every woman has a piece of marble in her chest,

The lawyer, the mother, the millionaire finely dressed.

All she wants is a person to burn away the cold stone,

She needs a warm hand for she can’t heal on her own.

She is cracked, torn in thirty-five pieces that lie on the street,

Waiting for a savior that she might never meet.

The men pass by her, look at her breast and her thigh,

But they don’t care what she feels, because statues don’t cry.