For the women who turn pain into beauty, here is a poem triptych for you.

The Glass Butterfly

by Natalie Chien, 14

Shattered

In her fists, a tsunami of incandescent rage roiled

As she tried to scrub the words off her locker

“THIEF. CHEATER. FAKE”

The words were fire in her mind

That no wet Kleenex could erase

The words were knives that carved scars into her heart

A house of sadness hit her heart

As she thought of him, and the way

Tiny white doves of happiness

Had fluttered in her veins as he walked by

But now her heart was splintered glass

Although his rage had cut her heart with scissors

She had tried to transmute it

But there was only so much darkness she could hold back

His rage was a crocodile of anger that wanted to devour her to bits

Redemption

Her soul was a glass butterfly

Amidst the musky jasmine trees of the once enchanted city

At least it had seemed enchanted when she had first 

Glass slippered her way through  

its neon forest of skyscraping possibilities

But now she knew what it was like for rootworms 

to munch on her as if she were milkweed

Eating the roots of her hope that tethered her to her dreams

Until they were masticated

In her run-down tenement 

she at first kept her Cheez-its in the fridge

To prevent the rat who lived in her wall crack

From devouring her dinner

Sitting on her upturned laundry basket 

with newspaper for a tablecloth

She contemplated her last Cheez-it 

and her last seventy-five cents

From the wall crack, her rat snuffled out

Inhaling the scent of synthetic cheddar

And as they shared her last cracker

Her wings unfurled

The Clouds Cannot Touch Me

Tiny white doves flutter in my veins 

As the clouds shed their soft, cold tears

The clouds cannot touch me

As the snow whispers

Over the slumbering town

And I swirl in a skirt of liquid blanket sky