“Body as Beehive”

I was 11 when a boy at the mall approached me
and said, It looks like bees attacked your face.

18, at a frat party, a guy asked me to pay
$5, said, You’re too ugly to drink for free.

Mom every day before school:
Why don’t you care about the way you look?
You could be pretty if you tried.

Today, 5:30 p.m.,
the sun is a blister on the skin of the sky and I
am tired

of searching for beauty in flakes
of peeled paint fallen on the floor
of my bedroom,

or in the eyes of strangers ordering beers,

in the soreness of my throat from begging my body
to become the beehive for once
not the bumpy road but the yellow house

on the surface.

Even beehives are knocked out of trees,
broken into,
but at least my holes would bleed
honey.

Bri Griffith earned a BA in Creative Writing from Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she emceed the Red Dog Reading Series. She’s a member of the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops, winner of the 2018 Glass Mountain Poetry & Prose Contest, and recipient of the 2018 Marilyn P. Donnelly Award for Excellence in Poetry. Griffith is a first-year MFA student in Poetry and Teaching Assistant at Florida International University in Miami, Florida.