They are the only ones who frustrate me. I am the only one who hears them. Twenty taunting dresses with bright colors and short hems. Twenty who take up space and multiply every season. Twenty infuriating choices there to confuse me. From my bed I can see them, but my mom says they all look the same.

Their spite is secret. They send taunts through my brain. They look fine, but never pretty enough and wrap their thin evil threads around my self esteem and reach for the sky in piles on the floor and never quit their sneers. This is how they pique.

Let one flatter just enough, the rest revolt like an army abandoned, each left bickering and gossiping like teenagers. Pique, pique, pique, dresses chant to my mirror. They mock.

When I am too angry to go out and too defeated not to cry, when I know I am stupid for fighting with clothes, then it is I tell them they’re wrong. When they all lie on the floor, out of sneers. Twenty who were not enough. Twenty who mock and do not forget to mock. Twenty more in my sister’s closet, whose words are praising and kind.