She was beautiful, too beautiful for her own good.

So beautiful that nobody saw her suffering.

They all just wanted to admire her.

She was an escape.

Something to be enjoyed.

Nobody wanted to see that she had a heart underneath, a heart that hurt, a heart that was shattered.

She was so beautiful that the broken pieces of glass around her only elevated the price of her beauty.

They made her look like a piece of art instead of a human being who needed to vent, who needed other people too and was not only there to fulfill others' needs.

She was too beautiful.

And she fears she will always be too beautiful.

She was beautiful but no one saw her

as she opened up her tangled web of veins,

black blood flowing in streams of her past,

little stippled roadmaps of stories unheard.

Why did nobody peel back her surface

to expose her insides full of truth?

She was a stunning masterpiece fading

in a desolate wilderness from which

she could not escape as she extinguished

her final flame that wasn’t ever enough,

leaving an outline of her slow dripping

of painful angst curdling within her soul.

Angels wept bitter tears on dark earth,

her skeleton shuddered beneath their feet

and a lone eagle circled above, leaving

her sun melting in an unnoticed puddle,

forgotten in cries of unspent tomorrows.

She was told that she was beautiful but nobody saw how much she didn't believe it. 

She cut herself to feel something, to feel pain because the world around her was numb to all types of beauty and only regarded one. She hated being told that she wasn't beautiful enough for this, so she had to change herself. She was beautiful for this but not enough for that. 

She was told this so much that she started to feel the words in more than just chest, her heart, her skin.

She wanted to rip her skin off, she was stuck on not being enough yet she was still beautiful.

She was stuck on what she was limited to but not what she dreamt of becoming.

She was beautiful but nobody saw her because she did not want to seen. She hid herself in baggy shirts and unflattering pants that did nothing to show her 'curves' like the girls in the magazines insisted was femininity. She was housed in a tent of concealment, looking through the windows of her eyes, that gave away the peaks of that which she was hiding.

She was beautiful and nobody saw her because she was not bathed in the concealers and contour that the instagram girls mark themselves with to show they are of the species "pretty". She did not show herself in the way people thought confident people should. Her skin was not the capital of her beauty.

Her body was not the capital of her beauty.

She was beautiful but nobody saw her, because she did not compress it into a mold that was shaped by the every shifting society that made perfection and beauty 'impossible'.

But She was Beautiful

©2017 Noklunga Mazibuko

She was beautiful

But nobody saw her soul

-Only her burned flesh

She was beautiful

But nobody saw her mind

-Only her body

She was beautiful

But nobody saw her heart

-Only her anger

She was beautiful

But nobody saw her dreams

-Only her vile life

She was beautiful

But nobody saw her hope

-Only her despair

She was beautiful

But nobody saw her light

-Only her darkness

She was beautiful

But nobody saw her grace

-Only her unease

She was beautiful

But nobody saw her smile

-Only her sad tears

She was beautiful

But nobody saw her fate

-Only her perils

And thus her beauty

Faded under her newly

Adopted eye view

Here's to the fools who

Couldn't see your beauty, but

-I'm looking at you...

She was beautiful, but nobody saw her. In a crowd where a thousand faces cry out for attention with paint and powder and glitter and ink, there is not much space left for skin laid bare, with all the imperfections of one who does not look in the mirror, but at the time, at the faces of those without.

She was beautiful, if any mortal woman could ever be deserving of that name. For she did not glow with an inner light; her flesh, untouched, did not inspire a divine light, was not worthy of Caravaggio's unending adoration, or Renoir's solemn reflection. The crowd preferred the glowing goddesses of Gucci and Givenchy, who floated, serene, from on high, upon billboards. There, they said, you did not have to worry about the dark side of things. Fighting and unhappiness is not a trouble when your sweetheart does not talk to you.

Where she walked, she stepped on the ground. She smiled when she was happy, and frowned when she was not. She was a working girl. Men do not appreciate working girls. They like the housewives, the sweet nothings dressed in pretty skirts, and her sharp tongue did nothing to soften the blow of their bosses' disappointment when they were caught making out in the coat closet. It's her fault for not being kinder, they said, and her duty to be kindest. No one will like her and when she is too old for children she'll wish she'd been prettier, they said.

She was stubborn, though, and their words were so many raindrops on stone to her. She smiled and left, and in the sunshine, when the rain had stopped, she led her nieces out to play with her in the puddles. As they made clumsy circles in the water and laughed and shouted to each other, crying her name, she turned her face up to the sun, she smiled the most radiant smile. The children are happy, she said to herself, they are safe, it is what my sister would have wanted, and somehow, it is enough.

The silver spectre gliding through the forest.

Limpid as she was, her face painted virgin white,

Pale eyes outlined warrior black.

She was beautiful

...but nobody saw her.

Her naked feet silently brushing dead leaves-

her frame fazed through black trees-

emerged in greens, never touching soil.

She was beautiful

...but nobody saw her.

Her ashen hair twisted in knots.

How silently she prowled under a full moon

like something out of Pandora's box.

She was beautiful

...but nobody saw her.

The serpent mangled and bleeding,

healed by her touch.

Uncoiling he thanked her with a kiss.

She was beautiful.

-Jo Resner © 7-11-17 

None admired her soft curves or the thin layer or powder that clung to her face. Always shadowed by her her sister, her light and bright twin. She was all anybody ever saw. Iridescent and radiant, men sang to her and wrote poems of her beauty. Her aloofness, her subtlety. None spared thought for the dark twin. Left in the hollowness of isolation, she had beauty to match but she could not turn to see the rays that shone from the sun. Trapped in a world in which all she felt was the dark. Jeered at as inaccessible and cold none cared to make a light big enough to illuminate her, to let her radiance shine as full as her sisters did. And so invisible she would stay. The dark side of the moon. 

She's beautiful.  

She does not know it. 

Never in her life was she told she's beautiful.  

Every woman must hear it even for once. 

No no

She heard it before. 

You're beautiful someone told her. 

It was music to her ears. 

It was music but out of tune when she saw the face of the one who told her this.  

His face full of sarcasm. 

Since then 

She never believed on anyone who praise her and tells her she's beautiful. 

You're beautiful 

Is one of the most awaited phrase and most appreciated phrase every woman loves. 

Not her.  

It's an insult to her.  

She's not beautiful she know.

She knew ever since she's little 

The problem is,  everyone wants to hurt her with this phrase.  

The phrase that should be comforting is hurting her. 

She's not ugly

She's beautiful

only those who know her, know how much. 

She's beautiful 

She just doesn't want to accept it anymore because of everyone who made her feel she's not. 

She was beautiful but no body saw her because she hid her eyes behind her long dark fringe.  She hated her nose, the way her mouth looked crooked and how everyone always asked her to smile.  Smile Shelley, you always look so depressed.   Smile Shelley, you look different when you smile.     Why do people say things that make you withdraw more into yourself, when your mind is already telling you that you are a failure anyway.

She had boring grey eyes she thought.  They were like muddy clouds on a brewing storm, indecisive and not passionate enough to become the storm, just muddling around doing not very much.   Quick glances at people were enough for her to see that they weren't interested, that she was boring to them.  Not good enough for a second glance in her mind, an obscurity, a blend in the mass of people in the world.  Unseen. That's how she saw herself.

I never saw her like that.   I saw her as sunlight on a winters day, an echo of a small smile on cupids bow lips.  Elegant nose and slightly flared nostrils when she was passionately talking about things she loved, art and spirituality.  Grey eyes that sparked to silver lights flickering like sunlight on the water, pulling you into her depths and making you feel encompassed by her understanding, one hundred percent of her attention.   The way she flicked back that fringe, graceful sweep of her hand and the tinkling laughter like raindrops on water.   She was beautiful in her understanding, but unseen by herself.  Her own light invisible, she plodded through her substandard life. But she shone, a beacon for those who took the time to see, the beauty in the simplicity of her being.   I wish I could remove those glasses of self loathing she wore, distorting her view of her being, judging and condemning no one else but herself.

I wanted to give her a gift, a gift of seeing herself but until she took those invisible glasses off, she was doomed to never see her own beauty, the shine of her heart light and the pull of her soul.   Oh, open your eyes Shelley, for the world is blessed by your presence and heart, gorgeous grey eyes and a hint of smile.   Stop hiding your light under a bushel of judgement or forever be lost in a darkening world through your own eyes.

She was beautiful but no body saw her because she lost herself in a place where acceptance and love dies a lonely death.