Photograph of the Girl

Photograph of the Girl · Sharon Olds The girl sits on the hard ground, the dry pan of Russia, in the drought of 1921, stunned, eyes closed, mouth open, raw hot wind blowing sand in her face. Hunger and puberty are taking her together. She leans on a sack, layers of clothes fluttering in the heat, the new radius of her arm curved. She cannot be not beautiful, but she is starving. Each day she grows thinner, and her bones grow longer, porous. The caption says she is going to starve to death that winter with millions of others. Deep in her body the ovaries let out her first eggs, golden as drops of grain. 58 · The Missouri Review ...