Quantifiers Poem by Cherry Ma

They said I was five-feet-six.
But they saw not how it had been:
He held me tight, my head fitted under his chin,
My ears against the bolting of a heart,
A heart that spinned
A swirl of lies, lies, lies.
I looked into his eyes, transfixed.

They called me a thirty-four-B.
But underneath they could not see
The full blown roses bursting in my chest,
Their thorns against a heart, where rests
A nightingale in a trembling nest
Above a full-brimmed blood-red lake;
A growning heart that aches.

They said I weighed a-hundred-and-twenty-pounds.
But that is the weight of the sound
Of songs and sobs and tables turned,
Of the choices unchosen, the learned unlearned.
And of the feet among the puddles, dancing steps light,
And of the waltzing spirit taking flight.