You Were Always Beautiful Enough Poem by nadia louise

bare feet moving across the stone cold floor
your hands are shaking, but you can't figure out why
take a breath, and another, until you suffocate in air
you don't know who you are.
the mirror hangs in the hallway, you take a glance
but you wish you didn't. you wish you never had.
eyelashes aren't long enough, smile too crooked
why are your cheeks so pale and your nose so big?
magazines lie in the rubbish; you never read them
full of socially-constructed definitions
of beauty and who you should want to be like-
thinner, taller, prettier, smarter, more confident
it is screaming screaming screaming
stop being yourself.
you deflate, self-destruct, hide away in your head
because it's hard to be who you are
in a world telling you to be something else.
you step on the weighing scale
tears burning your throat locked
you don't know why it hurts.
why does it hurt so much?
this is who you are. you cannot change that
nothing in the world can.
you ask yourself, over and over
who said you weren't beautiful enough?
who said you weren't enough at all?
you throw away your scales
you don't need to be skinny to be happy.
you smile at the mirror
you don't need an airbrushed face to be beautiful.
beautiful.
your thin, pale lips
your awkward, lopsided laugh
your eyes that aren't the right shape
the bones sticking out of your shoulders:
this is what makes you beautiful.
everything about you, all the things you could change -
but choose not to.
because you're perfect being imperfect
and no one in the world
could ever change that.


❀ n.l.j. ✯