What would you look like if your exterior appearance reflected what was inside?
I would look like a burned thing, charred and blistered and fluid filled. Every hair singed away. Black scorches where my eyes used to be. Faint plumes of smoke emanating from my body and moving into the atmosphere, leaving me behind.
I would look like a ghost. A scary thing hiding in the dark that mostly haunts itself. Dragging my rattling chains, moaning in agony for all eternity. Ever hoping someone would see me and exorcise me from the land of the living where I don't belong and send me to the next world.
I would look like a child's broken plaything. A toy that no longer works. I don't get passed down or on to the next child. I get thrown away because I'm simply of no use any longer, and there are plenty of other things, better things, to make-believe with.
I would look like a flowering weed, stubborn and awkward. Struggling to survive places I never should have been, never should have grown. Places where there was not enough sun, not enough shelter, not enough love. People trample me underfoot, hack me down only for me to grow again, against my own will.
I would look like a prism. Rainbows of color flashing, warning, dazzling the beholder. A trick of light without substance. A bauble of distraction that first spins one way, then the next and never dances any other dance. I cease to be when you close your eyes, like I was never really there.
I would look like a tiresome burden that people would prefer to avoid. An old homeless woman suffering from dementia, sitting on a park bench surround by shopping bags filled with little treasures I dug from someone else's trash and have already forgotten. Small and bent and dirty. Wrinkled and frail and yellow. Confused. My fear would look like anger.
We always talk about inner beauty but other things reside there.
Things that are not so pretty. Not so easy to face, either in ourselves or in others.
We hide them there and for good reason.
Because who would love us if we didn't?
