She smiles all the time. Everyone who meets her is charmed. “What a perfect daughter you have,” they tell her parents.

She never raises her voice. She walks like a graceful princess, and talks like one too. Gets straight A’s. Pretty much does everything well that she puts her mind to (except math for some reason. Must be the curriculum).

The girls whisper to each other, “What a perfect girl she is. Wish I was her.”

When she gets home and removes the mask, she knocks over her mom’s antique vase. Tells her brother to get lost and regrets it later. Throws away several pages of her poetry that she decides aren’t worth it.

Wearing her red, white and blue t-shirt, she glances down at the red, blue and yellow charm bracelet on her wrist. Her heart is white with a red sun shining on it.

She watches the girls passing by outside in red, blue and yellow t-shirts. She sighs with annoyance, trying to decide which colors she’s wearing that she likes the most. Each time she tries to hate one, she ends up liking it later.

“Their lives are so perfect,” she mutters, watching the girls laugh and joke in the same language. “I wish I was like them.”

Both girl and peers never see beyond their fantasies. Their keen views of others vs. themselves makes them wish they could be someone else.

And most people, till the day they die, never see beyond that fantasy.

What you see

is not always what is

When you want to be free

first remember you’re His

What they say

is not always true

Only Jesus is the way

the way of hope for you

From the rising sun

to the three in one star

the liberty will run

it will never be far.

When you see someone who is perfect, you probably don’t know them that well.