Your Best

You say you are ugly,

call yourself names like awkward and clumsy;

but have you ever truly seen yourself?

Can you answer that honestly?

Pause for a minute now and promise me

that you'll set aside your loathing

for what's under your makeup and clothing.

Break up with your thoughts for a moment

and allow me to be a proponent of the idea

that they are wrong.

Tell me, have you ever seen yourself at rest?

Have you ever watching your own chest gently heaving

to the rhythm of your breathing?

Your face pressed into the pillow

relaxed and completely unetched

by unshed tears or farfetched fears;

a picture of peace between cotton sheets.

Or have you ever seen the way you look

curled up with your nose in a favourite book?

Your gaze is focused and intent;

you're content to be absentminded,

and only when reminded do you notice

that your tea's cold and the room is too dark

to tell an exclamation from a question mark.

And when you look up, blinking in confusion,

do you have an inkling of how your pupils' dilution

gives your eyes an infusion of brilliance?

And when those eyes alight on someone you love

or something you are proud of,

do you see how unguarded your expression becomes?

There's no suppression or concealing,

no question of the feelings you have

for the person you see.

Have you ever seen your own heart on your sleeve?

Can you imagine it?

Or do you only believe in your preconceived notion

that any show of emotion

makes you somehow less,

that untidy tears and loud laughter

only make you more of a mess to clean up after?

How can you say you are ugly?

Just because the version you see of yourself is not lovely

doesn't mean it's the only version that exists.

The person you are consists of so much more

than the mirrored image of your tear-stained face;

the body you stand in cannot encase

the full measure of your worth.

Those practiced smiles you gives to a camera lens

may be the only smiles you know,

but they are only a shadow of the smiles

you give to a friend.

How can you call yourself ugly

when you have never seen yourself at all?

Pictures and the mirror on the wall may be useful to a degree,

but when viewed through the skewed lens of judgement

the image twists and bends

into something you don't like to see.

Trust me, you are not what you see in your reflection;

you are more than the rolls on your midsection,

more than the shade of your complexion.

Imperfections will never take away the affections

of the the people who matter most.

So just trust in the loving words they have expressed,

because they are the ones who see you at your best.