What am I doing wrong?
I'm different now.
I'm not ugly anymore... right?
Please answer me.
I won't know until you say so.
I put on the dress you picked out,
I cut my hair the way you told me,
disguised my face in layers of powder
mixed with deception.
So... why are they still laughing at me?
It's still the same;
nothing's changed.
You say it's because
I'm not trying hard enough.
I ask you what it is I am trying to do.
If it isn't me, and it isn't you,
who is it exactly?
The popular girls made fun
of my lanky arms and legs.
Five years later, you look at me
and say with a twinge of disgust
how I used to be so skinny.
Being underweight was terrifying,
I agreed.
But it wasn't
the middle-school yearbook
that earned your disapproval,
it was the work of another five years
on my once-prominent bones.
I was not born
to love my appearance,
But taught to believe the cruel truth
about what it was to be me.
What desirable was,
I learned I was not;
I’m beautiful to someone,
just not to you.
I’ve known all too well
what being in love is,
all the while
trying to convince myself
that he must love me too,
or why would he be here at all?
Little did I know that
I was an easy target.
I’d been hurt before,
and boys like them
always know just what to say
to girls like me.
Teach me something I can use.
That sticks and stones
would break my bones,
but words would do far worse.
That words give no warning,
show not a shred of mercy for
their victims.
So do not point and call me pitiful
when I cannot accept a compliment,
Instead, try to
open your heart to the girl
who was called “boy” for years,
all because of such an
inconsequential feature
as her eyebrows.
While girlfriends in high school
talked about boys,
I sat in the corner
wondering when my turn would come.
I shouldn’t expect people to love me,
but I should keep quiet
and take what I can get.
And when a boy showed interest in me
for the first time,
my excitement was dissolved
by others' doubts,
surrounded by chantings of,
“Are you sure?”
Two years would pass
before I realized that I had been,
but that he, on the other hand, had not.
I wished time and time again
to be pretty,
for others to see me as a person
rather than an art project
that someone had failed
to scrap years ago.
Still, I hear every now and again,
“You are beautiful.”
To this day, I do not know
where this voice comes from,
yet this disembodied voice
still chants.
No, I am not a princess,
and I am not perfect,
but somewhere,
I believe that I am beautiful.
While others were awarded aces,
I was dealt the Queen of Hearts.
Someday,
when the children grow old,
when the smoke
from the cootie-war clears again,
they will realize that
there never was a game to be played.
