"Do you think you're perfect?"
The question you assigned us in class to answer with our pathetic, un-intellectual words on ink and paper. What is perfection? In this narrow-minded little school, it would seem it is your appearance.
Where you dress according to higher class, color coordinated clothing, with neatly styled hair and thickly coated eyes of mascara. When you walk in a room and no one stares with disapproval or disgust; instead they smile and exchange sweet but empty greetings to a stranger. Your existence is noticeable and real to them. Now me, I walk down halls filled with choking perfume and body odor, avoiding any real contact with rich, head-class clones. Everyone chatting all at once like a chorus, walking around me as if I am garbage, staring at my pierced face with objection, fear and wonder. I hear "freak" ring down the hallway. I shrug the comment away with dismissal,"Don't worry, I don't bite." But, they do not know that.
I come home to an empty paradox of a house with white picket fences, neatly trimmed lawn, flowers on the porch yet filled with demanding words and screams of insults pouring out the windows. Inside, an apathetic that drowns himself in self-pity mixed with liquor. He hides himself from the outside world because of me, my face a reminder of an angel, our angel, stolen from us by the deadly grasp of cancer. I shadow myself in black, my face a mask of coldness.
I feel content through my self-created costume. I am not like them. I do not care to listen to the empty insults of my judgmental, self-centered fellow students. I do not care what they whisper about me. I am comfortable with my looks and my style. I am the way I am. I will not change; I am stronger than the demon that waits by my door.
So, ask again "Do you think you're perfect?" I am what I call the perfect shadow.
