I Love You When You're Pretty
When you said hi, I didn't see you in her fitted polka dots and your hair like a USO girl and your legs in heels. Everyone is beautiful in your grandma's pictures but we dress with conscience now, buffing out your curves or the square cut of my shoulders with fair-trade cotton. What right do you have, anyway, in eye shadow and stockings, wearing lipstick I can only see close? What right do I have, now, to closeness, to feel like cigarettes won't kill me and sex is not transaction? What right to be pretty? And to love you when you are?
About the author:
Christopher Cocca lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Elimae, Thieves Jargon, Six Sentences, Boston Literary Magazine, Geez Magazine, Brevity, and The (Ursinus College) Lantern. He is a graduate of Yale Divinity School and is hopefully awaiting an admissions decision from an MFA program in New York.