Framed by the World
By: Gabriella Farnadi
They’ve painted her into corners,
shapes too narrow for breath,
a line drawn tight between “pretty”
and “acceptable.”
She learns to stretch her skin thin,
contouring her soul
to fit the mold of a billboard
that never asked her name.
The world tells her she’s a masterpiece
but only if she erases
the parts that don’t sparkle,
the parts that don’t fit the frame.
They sell her softness as a flaw,
her strength as a threat,
her laughter as something loud,
something wrong.
How did it come to this?
Where beauty means shrinking
instead of growing,
where worth is weighed by a number,
by a look that fades with time.
They feed her the mirror’s lie,
ask her to swallow it whole,
while they carve out new pieces
whispering, “You’re not enough,
not yet, not ever.”
But what if beauty was never
the paint on her skin,
but the heart that beats too loudly
for this quiet, narrow world?