I try to understand

All that’s buried me under these

Layers of dust and sand.

 

If I’m to live in this cruel world,

Should I not understand its cruelness?

Should I not know what hurled

Me under? Am I to lay down and take

What is given with no question? Should

I agree and make

The best of it?

 

“Your skirt is too short,” the yell,

So I go to the store and buy another,

The longest one they sell.

 

“You are not smart enough,” they explain,

So I give up on my dream and seek a

Change while I wait for color to drain

Back into my life.

 

“If only she were prettier,” they whisper

As I lock myself in a dressing room, waiting

For them to quit calling me Someone’s “less-beautiful” sister.

 

Is this the life I’m to live? Filled with regret and shame

Of not being enough, doing enough, or knowing enough? To be

Just another girl they criticize before even knowing her name?

 

I am buried under this dust and sand

Of magazine covers, expectations, clothes and words

And I think if I’m to lie here suffocating I should understand

Why they do not wish me to breathe.

 

And I don’t.