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Snapshot of Bess at Fifteen


ISSUE:  Fall 2013

Bending over the piano,
or putting the oboe to her lips,
she makes music the way a tree
makes leaves in April—

silence and bare branches
one moment, crescendoing
green the next. Sometimes,
reluctant as a doe, she hides

in the underbrush of books
and clothes in her room,
door firmly shut, kindness
and wit waiting to find

their proper object.
When she looks in the mirror,
she doesn’t see
how beautiful she is.

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