Girl is really happy.

Girl is never not smiling.

Girl laughs, and everyone

hears an echo of daffodils and butterscotch.

 

Other Girl is not all that happy.

Other Girl has no desire to smile.

Other Girl hears laughter,

But only registers a mockery of her self-loathing.

 

Girl is home to syrupy voice,

An open bowl of batter

With only sweet things inside.

 

Other Girl keeps her arguments between her canines,

Unwilling to vacate.

Makes sure her chasm of delusional imaginations and rotten remarks

Stays closed.

 

Girl says she doesn’t mind solitude.

 

Other Girl only knows lonely as a best friend gone sour:

Stops by unannounced

And rarely gives a reason for its presence.

 

Other Girl swept Girl on like a child’s bandage:

Bound to abandon

But at least for now

No one can see what’s underneath.

 

Other Girl erected Girl as a shrine

to her god she called Optimism

Only to feed the demons in her gut named Disappointment,

And Anxiety,

And Depression,

And everything else that stays

When the debt has already been paid.

 

Other Girl reads Neruda in public,

And Plath when she’s alone.

 

Other Girl holds her friends tightly,

And her own throat tighter.

 

Other Girl named each star after something she loved about herself,

Wasn’t surprised when they vanished in the morning.

 

Other Girl’s facade,

A game of dress up

That has yet to end.

 

Other Girl

And her cloak of

Imaginary personality

 

Other Girl is tired of wearing this cloak.

Wants to take it off,

But is somehow still convinced

She will grow into it

If she just wears it a little longer.