Ms. Olympia

I practice my poses in five-inch clear plastic heels. My parts: held on, held up with rhinestone joists. Glued on. Bulletproofed. My flaws are in hiding—behind a shirred hypotenuse bedazzled. Something borrowed from Helen of Troy—bluer than the eyes of men—who’d kill for me. I live at the end of the aisle. Dominant as ether, old enough to have tasted the fruit. I grow pelts in response to abstention. I slide into darkness, sticky, unreal. Standing above myself, jeweled, funneled, relieved. Standing to drip dry. The pump—achieved in conjunction with water damage—reverses, otherwise ruins a perfectly good figure. Helen, the gold standard, the god. She says champion. Painted and pinched, weighed and judged. Hungry. The winner’s circle, divisible, in three. Bottom heavy, angular, hairless. Bloodless. Slowly reintroduce the use of the senses, veiled and numbered, labeled. Temporary victory, enviable. Glistening and holy, there is no end—to the sentence. A chain, linked by carbon compounds. Transmutation as origin story, stretched pathological, enduring the count—down to cheekbones/hip bones/smile. A sequined flex in sequence: relax. I bet you say that to all the girls.

Cecilia Savala is a poet from the Midwest who currently writes from the desert of Tempe, AZ, where she serves as associate poetry editor for Hayden's Ferry Review. Her work can be found in the Boiler Journal, Mochila Review, and Underground, among others. You can follow her at @cecsav on Instagram.