She’s 2 years old in spaghetti straps,
still 
a fairy princess
who hasn’t learned
what they did to Sleeping Beauty.

Smiles sticky with strawberry,
muddy drip castles,
crayons and paper crowns,
sing the alphabet while you wash your hands - 
No.
Go home, girl, the boys can see your shoulders.

She’s 2 years old, 
but that’s 2 going on 12,
going on
first-day-of-middle-school and that skirt’s a knuckle higher than regulation,
going on
16 and grown men won’t take their eyes off you,
18, afraid at the college campus,
afraid
to be the one-in-five,
one-in-four
13, 19, 27%

2 years old, going on
Tumblr posts with S.O.S. hotlines,
first-time-being-followed-back-from-the-subway,
swallowed by the wolf,
hold your keys in your fist, don’t leave your drink, remember, long hair is easier to grab onto,
Red Riding Hood, swallowed by the wolf,

the superhero
in skin-tight vinyl,
wears knives like diamonds,
crushes kingdoms with cutting words,
but it’s her curves that make her watchable, 
the same watchable that labels naked knees a reason to close textbooks.

That turns hemline
into a meal for hungering eyes.

As if the hemline mattered.

As if
an inch of collarbone 
tastes more like forbidden fruit than excuses,
nothing she could have done
would have changed the way those eyes follow her.

The slavering lips
wrench bile from my guts.
It splatters onto white tile, hot against cold,
I know
what happened to Sleeping Beauty,
but it’s storyteller, not prince,
that makes me sick.