I am looking for beauty.

Sometimes I wonder, does this make me shallow? Will I become like the rest, unable to see anything beyond a clean surface? I don't know. I don't know much for certain anymore.

When I was little, I knew everything, and everything was easy. I liked playing outside more than dolls, but I liked dolls sometimes too. I never wore makeup. I was in a play once, and the eyeliner didn't wash off. I wore it to school the next day and was mortified. I couldn't stand the thought that someone might think I was looking for beauty.

Now my dresser is covered in powders and paints. Black and blue eyeliner, red and purple eyeshadow. Lip gloss and lip stick and jewelry never wear.

I don't even know what beauty is, these days. Boys in eyeliner and girls in fishnet and what am I doing, what have I done? I know that beauty and pretty are different. Pretty is lip gloss and miniskirts, mainstream and shameful. I was never pretty. I could almost be beautiful, maybe, if the light and the makeup were right. But only just barely. It made me cry, sometimes. I wanted to be beautiful and strong. All I can manage is noticable and stubborn.

Maybe I am shallow. But there's more to beauty than eyeliner and mascara, I know. It can be the sound of someone's voice. It can be a touch, a feeling, light and shadow mixed against the ceiling. Beauty can be an exquisite kind of pain, that makes your breath catch in your throat and your eyes wet. Wet eyes, crying off the eyeliner, leaving sooty streaks down your face.
Beauty in pictures and photos and paintings and life. Children and people and dresses and light. Where am I going, where have I gone? I don't know, I was hoping you could tell me. And what could you tell me, how would you know? I couldn't tell you, there's nothing to show. I have eyeliner and fishnet and black skirts and shirts, I have pictures and photos and drawings and books. I've got all this yet I've nothing to show, and where do I go from here? Short and dark hair and glasses and hands, and where do I go from here?

Beauty's elusive and pretty's not me, I am before you and what do you see? I don't even know what I'm trying to be with my heavy eyemakeup and and my piercings and hair, I don't even know why anyone would care. Beauty and shadow and iris and light, snapshots and poetry just say it's alright, running and screaming and crying at night, didn't you know I've been crying at night.

I can't find beauty in my shut-in world. I tried to once, and I got cut up. Now I'm trying to get out, I can't seem to shut up. I've got nothing to say but I've got so much voice,and I wouldn't talk if you gave me a choice. But silence is not what I'm looking for, tell me you hate me and show me the door.