Beautiful

Allison

 

You

are beautiful in every way,

they say.

Don’t ever change. Your personality is what matters.

Don’t listen to other people.

You’re not fat.

You’re unique.

Tell me why

it’s hard to look in the mirror

without watching

tears spill from my face

or fingers lingering on my eyelids,

wiping droplets of water from my face.

Explain why

I compare myself to others,

never feeling confident or beautiful.

How can I ignore

the magazines I’ve read

about perfect women

with perfect bodies?

Why

am I obsessed with beauty?

Why do I ask myself

why I don’t have any?

I keep on saying

that the world doesn’t care about beauty,

that no one should care what you look like.

But all I care about

is being

beautiful.

And beautiful

never happens to me.

I look at others,

the people who are perfect and flawless,

then look down at myself,

the plain, boring girl.

I always wonder

why I wasn’t born beautiful,

flawless.

It never made sense.

Beauty wasn’t inside of me,

it failed to show up on the outside.

Maybe

life is saying that all I need

is to be beautiful on the inside

to see the beauty

outside.

Tell me why

I can’t be beautiful.

Everyone else is.

Where’s my beauty?