Residue.

Who taught you to look at yourself like that?
Who taught beauty to dislike our bodies?

I want to take the word muse
and peel it out of my dictionary
like a worn sticker

Sprinkle sugar on its gummy side
and watch ants eat the skin that is left
They’ll take it underground in chunks
feed it to their queen
who will birth it into other ants

They’ll move in determined thousands
a marching exclamation
a swarm of bodies in refusal
tearing sugar from worn out words.