Pink

Judith Steele

is for girls
for frilly dresses, frills and flounces,
satins and silks and voiles,
stiff petticoats for rock’n’roll pink swirls
Pink is for hair ribbons
for girls with bouncy curls

Pink is for ballet shoes,
pliable pink to enclose the heel,
deceptively soft over blocks of wood
the toes must dance on

At every performance, at every lesson,
pink ballet shoes and satin ribbons
deny the bleeding toes.
Pink is strength in soft disguise
Pink is a hundred pirouettes
in defiance of pain.