It wasn’t that she wanted to be pretty.

She wanted the world to see her

as she saw herself.
She wanted to see herself.
That’s what my daughter tells me.
I watch her, high up on these rocks,

her arm extended in a welcoming gesture —

she invites the world in.
I hold my phone arm up

an echo of her greeting
and am horrified to see my face —

some jackass left the camera flipped

to stare back at the operator
and now I am confronted

with my judgmental chins

and slack mouth. What 
was I thinking about to make

such a grim expression?
I wanted to justify her figure

in this landscape. I wanted her

safe. My calcifying ideas
clamp around her, like the tower

Rapunzel’s furious witch-mother

locked her in. This fortress
I built with my own brain bowl,

bars grown from bone, I have stuck her

inside a snow dome, little white slips
flutter, so pretty; all the pages of magazines

telling girls how to be and the flicker

of grades and other ratings, ticker-tape
of male gaze and every comment

about her body — how tall, how blue, how boobs

and butt, how short the skirt —
why all this feedback about her appearance?

Who asked you?

And why mock her
when she draws her own door

and walks through it?