Gaia Rajan

Prayer for Doomed Girls

The driver on the way here joked about Bundy,
how he could be a serial killer with a little more eyebrow,
and he laughed and laughed and laughed. We take pictures

in a daisy field, and the sunlight reminds me we're alive,
though not for long, because the monsters are never far behind,
they look like any old man, they’re behind you right now, darling,

snarling holes in the sky. A man passing by says you’d look prettier
if you smiled, I wish I could take you-- we carve a language
of glances. Standing in that field, of course I want more,

a poem or a question, an elegy before we end. I want
something monstrous and visible. Dagger tooth, hollow
eyes. I grew up in the country. We lived quietly,

we lived behind the headlines, we choked ourselves
in politeness. Today, we are perfect and gorgeous
and hollow. We’ve killed every myth until there’s only

specter left. We trample our way forward,
shrinking from every shadow: just girls, always seconds
away from shattering, weapons with no safety.