SO I’M SHALLOW. I should be writing some deep essay about love, life, depression, or death, and instead I choose to tell you about my hair. You see, here’s the deal: it used to be curly. Not a little curly, but crazy-gorgeous, wavy-brunette-curls curly. It was strangers-stop-me-on-the-street-to-ask-about-it curly. I admit that for a few teenage years, [...]
The Long and the Short (and the Straight and the Curly) of It
by Kylie Turley
Truth Beautiful
by Elaine Rumsey Wagner
I remember sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen Surrounded by the warmth of the wood furnace, stoked hot Against the four-foot drifts of the Snake River Plain outside. She told me how beautiful I was, Her creased hands against my cheeks. She talked about the beauty of youth that doesn’t need Lipstick and cream blushers. Her [...]
See Your Beauty, Feel Your Power
by Angela W. Schultz
I. MY GRANDMOTHER TRAVELED the world during the waking sleep of her final days in a Salt Lake City hospice center. Sometimes she imagined herself in Austria, at other times in Japan, Massachusetts, or Virginia. As a former military wife, her memories spanned the globe. And when she revisited those memories, she always found work [...]
Fit for the Kingdom
by Candace Melville
I must die thin. I’m told when we are raised That not a single hair is lost. So I Now fear—at least, I would not be amazed To find—that every pound on hip and thigh And paunch remains in place. I can’t deny That what I weigh just now is not the “weigh” I want [...]