wading_pool jennifer circa 1997 And so the quiet girl with the bad hair and the bad complexion and the rumpled clothes that didn't quite fit decided to surround herself in beautiful. the quiet girl made friends with all the beautiful people with their bird-songs and their almond-honey eyes, she read books by people with important-sounding names and did up her bad hair real nice and smeared pink on her pinched cheeks and bought nice rumpled clothes that fit a little better and she was somebody. for 50 minutes on a 2nd hour tuesday she was somebody. she talked with the girl with the cute button-nose and the girl with the long dark sea-hair and she was somebody. she was somebody on a 3 long wednesday cookie-milk night with her bad hair pulled up and her bad complexion covered by smile and her rumpled clothes dashed with paint diamonds and she wrote song lyrics on the fake brick behind the wall stairs and she was sombody! but, she always came back, came back to the dark mirrors and flaming cheeks and down-cast eyes of the 4th hour ugly where the beauty would fade and the colors would mush to grey and purple and bird-black and the life would whirl-whirl down the drain and her eyes would be vacant and the girl with the bad hair and the bad complexion and the rumpled clothes would clutch tightly to her books as a life-raft and she would try not to drown in the ugly. then one day she stood up straight and realized that the ugly was only a wading pool, and that just beyond the shadow cast by doubt was the land of beautiful. so the girl dried herself off with lemon-sun and walked towards the sun and realized she had eyes un-judging eyes coffee-bean-colored sunflowers floating in a sea of freckles and she realized that her pillow-hands were lovely and kind and soft and she realized that her tooth-laugh was bells and she realized that beautiful is what you make it. and so the quiet girl with the not-so-bad hair and the not-so-bad complexion and the rumpled clothes that fit better realized that she was beautiful and all the down-cast eyes and pinched cheeks can't take that away. and so the girl found beautiful, not far from home. 000530 what's it to you? who go blather from