Hidden Pain

Every day she walks through the falling ashes of her life.
And no one even knows.

No one pays attention to

The way her heart is in too many pieces.
Broken too many times for her to believe
she can piece it back together again.

She keeps a smile on her face.
Keeps on laughing through the pain.
So no one asks.

But if someone looked a little closer,
they'd see the dark circles under her eyes,
the bruises, the tears she's trying to contain.
The scars on her wrists  and the pills in her backpack.

She thinks she's the only girl who lives like this.

Her house is divided by those who see her as a burden and
those who see her as a blessing.
A walking shadow of who she used to be,
and the bright future she could lead.

She dreads the night that every girl dreams of, because
Every guy wants to sleep with her but not one of them
wants to take her to prom.

She lowers her shirt so that maybe one guy will call her beautiful,
not knowing that the boy in math class has been staring at her blue eyes all year.

She looks at herself in the mirror every morning.
To see if today, she can truly see beauty.
But all she sees is the bulge around her waist
that no one else would notice with a magnifying glass.
She doesn't eat, just looks.  Every morning.

Who said lightning doesn't strike the same place twice?
She thought that the first time
would be the only time. 
But then it happened, again and again
until she was stripped of her identity,
and was replaced with shame.

She has scars from battles nobody won
and a hole in her heart the size of the world
because that's what hurt her.