“You know what I was thinking?” She says to me,
Peeking her head back around my doorframe.

Earlier that evening,
I’d asked her what she was thinking about.

She often lapses into long silences,
Apparently lost in thought.

She is notoriously evasive,
Loath to reveal her thoughts.

What I wouldn’t give to live inside her head,
To know what she ponders.

Upon her abrupt reappearance,

I am in the middle of the tedious and uncomfortable process
of taking my makeup off,

Scrubbing away the mask I put on
To better appeal to society’s standards of beauty.

“I was thinking how absurd it is that you don’t love yourself,”
And with that, she leaves.

I observe myself in the mirror:
half of my makeup gone,
a figurative split-personality revealing itself,

And I thought
You’re right.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t.
Much as I try for her sake.