A girl was walking home, and the skies were getting darker, someone had scribbled the skies out with a black marker
The wind kicked up, and the leaves swirled on the sidewalks, above the girl was a circle of hawks
The dreary weather made her hurry home and she bit her lip but she was stopped by a small, stray strip of paper that flattened itself against her chest
She stopped, for a moment, to catch her breath, picking it up, she read:
‘You will soon achieve perfection’
It belonged to a fortune cookie, that should tell her it was lucky, but she didn’t want any of it
‘I don’t want perfection, I’m just wonderful the way I am, any other type of perfection besides self love is just a type of sham’
The shadows behind her began to stir, and she was too late to cover her ears as they whispered to her
‘You’ve put on a lot of weight and you’re slow, you’re ugly enough and that’s such a crime, you should be on death row’
She looked down at her stomach and hastened her gait, she ignored the shadows as she quickened her pace
‘I know I may not look like much, but I have everything I need. Go away, I’m not to be bothered today’
The shadows continued to follow her, almost as a race
They slithered up brick and stone walls alike on whichever buildings she passed and continued to whisper their little lies into her fragile heart, their voices sweet as pies on a summer day, but she ignored them, continued on her way
‘I have friends who love me no matter what I may seem’ she smiles, and the shadows laugh
‘If you say we tell lies, then what is that? Lies of how they don’t pity you dearly because you’re always lonely if not for them, they see you, clearly, and use you up, throw you away like garbage because that is what you are. They tried to fix you, tried to make you a shining star, but you were hopeless. Are useless, because you can’t do anything on your own, you can’t even get it right when you’re alone.’
The sky began to tear, it began to spill it’s tears just as the girl spilled hers - accompanied by the countless fears that everything everyone had told her had been right
She had done her best to ignore the doors that shut when she walked past them, the whispers and giggles that followed her around like monsters in the hall, tried to ignore the walls she built up for herself because she did her best to let people in, never shoving them out, always forgiving because that’s what she had decided to be about
Of the boys that asked her out every day just so they could walk away, hands in their pockets, shrugging and saying ‘Oh, what a loss’
The girls that turned their faces away when she passed because they couldn’t stand to “look at that,” she was dehumanized past the point of any reason, every dig on her because they saw her as a pig, eating slops from the ground, less than nothing, never amounting to something because of her weight
Her loneliness they all attributed to her looks even though her heart had always been in the right place
Don’t you think she knows?
Don’t you think she knows what the world thinks?
Don’t pretend you don’t know she thinks because she’s told, she belongs in a slaughterhouse with the rest of the corpses of animals
That the way she chews is too loud, but no matter what they said no matter what, she was proud, because she was who she was, and she didn’t care, ignored the stares every day because loneliness is a camera that blurs the background to both reality and happiness, and sharply focuses on just you  
She stopped her walk in her galoshes to the front door, stains on her shirt from a food fight where it had really just been her against everyone else
‘I am already perfect’ She said, and she opened the door, wiped her boots on the rug, stepped into her slippers of crimson red, she went upstairs
Her mother was there, downstairs, cooking supper for just the pair of them
The girl sits on her bed for a second
Thinks of what all she could do
Weapons and medications, what to run from, what to overdose on
But supper
But
But supper was done
Her mother called from below and she hurried down because no matter what perfection was, she didn’t care for a moment
She wiped the rims of her eyes on her sleeve, wearing her heart in the same space, always had been in the right place, still determined to give the entire world everything she had
Because today, at least for one more day, she would live