I dream to become beautiful.

I softly graze my fingers around my face.  Back and forth I trace the pores on my forehead, before moving slowly down to my cheekbones, spending a minute on each and every feature.

I dream to become beautiful.

I stare blankly at my reflection in front of me.  I have dark circles the color of the stormy clouds rising over the sea.  My eyes are the shade of dirt.  My nose has a bump, the bones easy to feel if one simply traced the sides ever so slightly.  The texture of my skin is anything but smooth.  I can see the minuscule hair fragments that take up the space on my chin and above my lips- and my lips, oh, they are not pink at all!  They are a fat shade of brown, not pink.  Not pleasant, perfect pink.  They are boring- filthy, disgusting brown.  The edges of my lips are outlined darkly, the inside shaded with even more brown-just lighter.  Perhaps in the right lighting, one can imagine a shade of pink.  I am not in the right lighting.

I dream to become beautiful.  

I move down to my body.  My skin is the same thing- brown.  Not the glorious tan that the girls in my youth would dye their skin with- the cool, athletic, sexy tan- no, my tan is different.  The color of tree bark, dirt water, not beautiful at all.  Not something to admire in the slightest.

I dream to become beautiful.

As I gaze into my eyes, I blink.  Something has changed.  My eyes seem slightly lighter.  Almost bright, almost full of life.  I blink again.  Even more.  I blink and blink and blink and blink, and soon, it is no longer the boring brown it was.  Now, it is a beautiful shade of blue, blinding, ethereal.  Underneath, my once dark circles are now gone, clear and rejuvenating.  Slowly, my lips crack a little higher.

I dream to become beautiful.

I move down to my nose.  I blink ten times and it is no longer a crooked abomination.  Rather it is straight, tiny, almost childlike.  I move my fingers to feel it and realized that I barely can.  Its size is comparable to a large zit on someone’s forehead.  Of course, my nose is beautiful now.  Nobody could possibly compare it to a pimple.  My lips crack higher.

I dream to become beautiful.

I stare at the hair on my face- the hair on my body.  Dark, coarse, oily- the sheer opposite of blonde.  I blink 20 times.  No longer is the hair on my scalp black but now it is a short, thin, golden, white, mesmerizing clear color.  The hair on the rest of my body is completely gone, barren.  I trace my hands up and down feeling as though I am touching the delicate skin of a newborn.  My teeth begin to show.

I dream to become beautiful.

I go down to my lips, disgusting, fat, tainted.  I blink 50 times.  They are now a soft, supple, perfect, thin pink.  I trace my fingers around them and see that they are now each barely thicker than a thread of yarn.  Dimples begin to form.

I dream to become beautiful.

Finally, I look to my skin.  I blink 100 times.  No longer the grotesque brown, it is now pale, white, glorious rejuvenating white, so pale that I can see inside my body.  The veins bulge out of my arms and neck, my rib cage and internal organs are clearly visible through my chest, and each beat of my heart can be heard clearly from the outside.  I lightly graze my hand across my body and feel my skin so smooth that it is almost sticky.  I smile wider.

I dream to become beautiful.

I stare back at my reflection in all of its raw beauty and power.  The urge to almost bow down to it, pray to it, worship it, is unbearable.  My smile becomes so wide that I feel it vibrating throughout my entire being.  I smile, smile, laugh, laugh, smile, laugh, smile, laugh, till I collapse into a pile of fluid onto the ground.  I still smile.

I have become beautiful.