There was a little girl that was born
and treated as second best.
For she was a girl.
And second born.
And never learned privelige.
And was told to be silent and never fight back.
For to be invisible was safer than to be a target.
And to believe others.
And to listen well.
Because everyone knew more than she did.
She was even scolded to work harder to be smart
For she was not born pretty
And perhaps never would be.
But in some ways, perhaps that would be better
To keep her safe.
Which it never really did.
And that there was more to be earned
In humility than in challenge.
In kissing one’s scars
Instead of cutting them deeper
As a reminder that life would sometimes hurt
But the sweet inches between harm
Were that much more precious
And luminous instead.
And so she was always treated
Having become so convinced
That this is how it was supposed to be
So when anyone treated her
Like a whole person
She disbelieved them and held them suspect.
And terribly, terribly so, she began to believe it
This less than personworth
And people took advantage of this.
Or perhaps, were just careless, and thoughtless.
And she began to believe
That someone she had deserved it.
Enough was a big word.
It was something she never seemed to be.
And she considered other judgements and predispositions
as stated with a keener eyes than her own
For her perspective, was also, not enough.
And then one day
She realized overall.
That most everyone, herself included
were cruel
and thoughtless
but overall idiots
and no more and no less
than her
and that this was the definition
of personworth
Less than a nickle
and more than a war