August 1962.
In an interview with Marilyn Monroe
Ms. Magazine gleefully asked her,
“How does it feel to be a sex symbol?”

Her response.
“A sex symbol becomes a thing… I just hate to be a thing.”

Oh Marilyn…
I know you never asked for your bones.

What a shame we made you pay for how your skin stretched over them.
Symmetry we called it. Perfect, even.

You stitchless beauty
Our own
American doll.

How we hung you in the headlights of Hollywood
printed you on 8x10s
made you as common as a cough

At the advent of the color motion picture
you shifted the beauty paradigm
caused brunettes to rip fistfuls of hair out
hoping it would bloom back blonde

People migrated towards as if you were the Gold-rush.

We did not care for Norma Jean
so we made Marilyn Monroe

You became our epidemic,
it was all your fault sweetheart.

The way we scanned your body like an item to be put in a bag
told you that what you had to say was as interesting as a dial tone.

You were too pretty to be considered the shy girl
mistook your quietness for either
stuck-up or dumb

“You don’t need a brain, baby,
with a body like that”

Is what they told you.

It has been 48years after your death
and you have become what you never wanted to be

an emblem
an icon
a pin-up pimped for all things sexy

Your skeleton nothing but a mound of silt
knuckles and kneecaps just gravel in a tomb

Yet your epithet still howls

Blond bombshell
Honey
Sweetie
Baby

A person turned placard.

You never wanted your bones. And yet,
you are still strewn across billboards
an imprint on a Visa platinum
the way we used you like a napkin to wipe ourselves
clean

Your skin was that distracting.

We never thought to ask how you felt in it
simply opened the curtain and announced you
sex symbol

While the men of your era were modestly declared heartthrobs
despite all the Joe DiMaggio punches you received from a husband
who we deemed hero.

How the only help you ever received from producers
was this piece of advice,

“Duck if he tries to hit you in the face, that’s too pretty, doll—
to bang up.”

We made you as secondhand as a receipt
a proof of purchase
that you are a thing, girl.

It is no wonder that you had trouble sleeping
afraid that if you closed your eyes for too long
women would come in and slit your silhouette in an attempt
to stitch themselves in it

Men would ecstatically rape your shadow.
You, Marilyn,
were that sexy
we couldn’t help it.

As soon as you curved we felt that your body was ours for the taking
squeezed you like an avocado to see if you were ripe enough
peeled you like a fruit.

We thought you apricot, honeydew.

You were supple, sensuous
the thought of being tangled with you muddled men

it caused women to curse their own bones
for the way they curved under the skin

“Stop crying!
Why are you such an ungrateful bitch?
People would kill to be you,
Marilyn.”
They said.

Because who would have ever thought that you would kill yourself to not?