Look at me.

I mean it, look at me.

Not at my face, look in my eyes.

Look where my real beauty lies.

I know you’ve been missing it for some time.

Because on the outside,

I don’t look like me.

I’m just a reflection of what the world wants my insides to be.

I’m not this perfect being that asks you to bask in her light,

I glow from inside, but it’s worn down over the months.

My glow that lit my way has been suppressed by a film,

A buildup, if you will,

Of society’s rules and regulations.

Well I have decided to be my own queen,

And as my body was taken from my dominion by your idea of “real” beauty,

I’m asking you to look at me.

Better yet, listen to me.

Really, listen.

Not to my schoolgirl charm, but to my sailor talk.

Listen as my boots walk down the hall,

Clicking as I run down and loose all of my sanity.

I know you missed my belting, “I do not care at all anymore!”

When all I said was, “No. That is fine.”

Fine? Oh,

Fine is a fine filter if I ever saw one.

It is the word I use the most,

To bottle up my biggest emotions

It is like a haze that follows you around, when all you want to do is see the sun.

I’m sorry, have I offended you?

Why, because I kept both my mouth and mind open,

When all you wanted to do was to keep it shut?

I know, this isn’t very proper of me to spill out all my thoughts,

And I promise I’m almost done,

But you need to realize that my core, the little inside part that keeps me going,

Is so much more that what a ten-page magazine can tell me to be.

Hell, honey, I’m a damn fifteen-volume encyclopedia.

They want me to have the depth of a thimble,

But I am all seven seas.

And they can try, but I promise you, that they will never get to me.

They want me to be a flower petal,

Ready for the picking by someone who says that caring,

Is pulling me up from my roots and leaving me alone on a shelf,

Until I wither away to nothing.

What they don’t know is that I am a great sequoia seed.

I may be small right now,

I may not be what they want,

I may not be as flashy or as showy as some rose petal,

But one day, I will grow.

I will grow as tall as the sky, then taller, if I want to.

And I want to so I can show them.

I will become something tangible and giving,

I will not wither on their shelf; I’ll keep on living.

My voice will not be silenced as the wind carries it away to a new world,

The film will slowly decay,

And one day, honey,

You will look at me,

And see me.