Twenty years ago 

I’m sitting on the couch in my living room 

Eagerly waiting to turn five 

I sit between my parents 

Facing the television 

Concentrating not on the screen 

But on the VCR below 

Gazing in anticipation at the luminescent green numbers on the display 

Tonight, I will gain another year to my life 

And like Cinderella, when the clock strikes midnight 

I will be transformed out of this 

Chubby, ugly little body into 

That of A Beautiful Girl 

At that time I will possess 

The type of beauty that will make others 

Stop and stare in my direction 

They’ll tell my parents 

“Your daughter is so beautiful” 

And I will finally know what it feels like not to be invisible 

The clock reads “12:00” 

And I sprint to the bathroom 

Feverishly flipping the light switch 

As I turn to face myself in the mirror 

The face that stares back at me etched with disappointment 

When I realize that I am the same as I was before 

Five has brought no new changes 

I stretch the skin on my face, pulling at its squish 

Wondering why it’s still so round 

I look down at my hands 

Still small, still ending in fat fingers 

My hands migrate to my abdomen 

And I feel the small swell that I am convinced 

Is larger than the tummies of everyone else my age 

I am left with the truth that I am still me 

I return to the living room 

Walking slowly as if leading the procession 

At the funeral for my aspirations 

Realizing now that I will never look like A Beautiful Girl 

And pondering all that that means 

A Beautiful Girl has friends 

Her parents don’t fight every other day 

She doesn’t cry at church when she has to go to Sunday school 

She doesn’t cry when a stranger looks at her 

She doesn’t cry at night because she’s afraid kidnappers will sneak through her window 

Or because she was ripped out of sleep by a nightmare that her mom was dead 

She just exists with the ease and grace 

That I do not possess 

I realize that I am stuck in this vessel 

That I will never be who I want to be 

Because I will always look like me 

My parents meet my look of anguish with joy 

“Are you excited it’s your birthday?” they ask 

“I thought I’d look different,” I say 

They laugh at my childish naivety 

Thinking it’s so cute that 

I could believe something so preposterous 

Twenty years later 

I still reside in this body 

I still cry 

I still hate church and strangers 

And I still don’t feel like A Beautiful Girl 

The kind that walks through life seemingly so happy about everything 

I am still different 

But instead of rebuking this 

I’ve embraced it 

Because now I know The Beautiful Girls 

Haven’t seen the shit I’ve seen 

I’ve walked the circles of Hell 

And they are true to their name in every fashion 

I have clawed my way through their treachery 

Ripped and bit and scratched through the layers of torment 

Until my fingers were left raw and bleeding 

Those girls weren’t thought of as freaks in school 

They didn’t have 

A born-again bipolar father 

Who didn’t take his medication 

Who told me I wasn’t pretty 

Whose favorite nickname for me was 

“Bitch-just-like-your-mother” 

They never sat on a couch at the age of twelve 

Having to hear “your brother’s dead” 

When hearing the news of their mother’s miscarriage 

Never had to realize after their mother almost died 

Of a postpartum hemorrhage 

After having their baby sister 

That one day, mom will die 

One day, we will all die 

And this is the way of life 

I spent high school raising a baby 

After my father was finally deemed a danger to his family 

And was no longer allowed to live with us 

I moved seven hundred miles away 

Into the arms of an abusive man-child 

Who would be my mental captor for the next five years 

I have torn free of my chrysalis 

That transformed me through my years of anguish 

And have emerged 

Not a monarch like The Beautiful Girls my age 

Instead, I have become archerontia atropis 

The death moth 

My appearance is soft and unassuming 

But make no mistake 

I am an omen 

Cunning as they come 

I am not to be fucked with 

Resilient while bees attack as I steal their honey 

You need only look at the skull etched on my likeness to see 

I have a penchant for darkness 

But a taste for the sweetness that life has to offer 

And if I could return to that little girl 

Staring in anguish at her reflection in the mirror 

I would tell her that she is a different kind of beautiful 

Because the beauty that comes from darkness 

Is rarer than that born in light