The girl in the crowd
There is always a Lacy.
She is the girl at the mall with the waist I wish was mine,
the one in the hallway whose makeup is a seamless blur of color,
looking like she was made of angel dust and light
while I feel like I’m made of something heavy and wrong.
She is the secret to existing that I wasn’t given,
the “perfect” standard that follows me into every room.
I watch her from the corner of my eye, hidden in plain sight,
doing the mental math of everything I lack.
I look at her waist the way it narrows just right
and then I look at mine and wonder why it feels so wide.
I see her face, skin like glass and makeup like a dream,
and I think of all the products I’ve bought
just trying to hide a version of myself I can’t stand.
It’s a sweet kind of torture, worshiping a stranger.
I try to tell myself that “people are people,”
but my brain only sees a starlet and a disaster.
Every compliment she gets feels like a punch in the stomach,
a reminder that no matter what I do,
I’ll never look like the version of “pretty” she is.
I hate the way my eyes find her in every crowd.
I despise my rotten mind for the way it worships her
and uses her beauty to tear my own self apart.
Because pretty isn’t pretty enough when she is everywhere,
poisoning the way I see myself
until I’m just a girl chasing a ghost
who doesn’t even know she’s haunting me.
