when she was a child,
she used to draw pictures
of bodyless women,
stacked on the page
like books stacked
on a shelf. neat and clean, she’d say.
her mother would smile and ask her,
why don’t these women have bodies?
and she’d smile back
in her innocent way, and say
because they’re free
Meghana Mysore is a senior at Lake Oswego High School where she writes and edits for the newspaper and literary magazine. Her work has been published in YARN, Burningword, Canvas, Crashtest, VoiceCatcher, Alexandria Quarterly, Cuckoo Quarterly, Stepping Stones, The Writers’ Slate, and more. She is the recipient of several Gold and Silver Keys from Scholastic Art & Writing and an Honorable Mention from the Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest. “Je suis libre de mon corps #2” is forthcoming in Alexandria Quarterly.