dear also means expensive - first draft

womanhood, says the television

is ideally slim and shaved, yet you

are covered in hairs I touch and love,

I with curves and stretch marks you touch and love,

making us, I believe, a danger to society at large.

promise me you'll never pick up a razor

or pluck those lush brows that signal your moods.

in return I will look in the mirror and try to see

what you perceive that so unaccountably makes you deem

my crinkled soul adequately housed

and your glorious tiny bitten-down fingers complemented

in my hands, or as I bring them to chapped uncolored lips.

I am a compassionate person, I hope, but I wonder more

with each day how blind and deaf and without taste the world

has been that hordes do not jostle and cajole

for your every touch and word.

to make you want is the greatest gift

I have been given, to make me content

is a miracle on your part, your voice in Russian songs

where we must not forget the dual meaning of dear,

and your hushed Hebrew prayer for my sorrows

makes me whisper the Thai suteerak, suteerak,

(most beloved of mine)

for though "dear" also means "expensive"

you are worth my fortune and fear.