magazine model by Robina Nguyen (Canada)

​Content warning: body dysmorphia 

                                                            
​she’s the Crouching Venus
Aphrodite poised on a marble plate
a figurehead carved
by a generous hand.
​
hands trail down
hips that curve,
rolling valleys
beneath her fingertips.

​
she wants to be graceful,
lightweight,
shoulder blades jutting out
like the wings of a baby bird,
pale skin stretched over bones.
​
artifacts of her mother’s shame,
relics of the past,
haunt her body,
displaying themselves in her weary eyes,
the faint ridges of scars,
the way her nails
claw at her stretch marks,
her paint strokes,
her lightning streaks,
they flash across
thunder thighs.





Robina Nguyen (she/her) is a queer high school student and freelance writer. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Shameless Magazine, Ambré Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, HaluHalo Journal, Disobedient Magazine and West End Phoenix among others. She loves to paint, haunt local bookstores and argue about the Oxford comma.