Sleeping Beauty
by Kaylin Kaupish

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is only skin deep. Beauty is pain is beauty is pain… Beauty pageant with a beauty queen. Throw her some flowers cause she’s so damn beautiful. Beauty salons, beauty treatments, beauty products… Don’t bother her she needs her beauty sleep. Sit in your tanning bed and get that gold skin. Fill your lips with fakeness. Cover your skin with cement. Suck in your stomach to sickness. Paint your naked nails. Stifle back the wails. And pose for the camera. Pose pose pose. Click click click. Keep it up, darling. It’s getting hard to keep up appearances. Hides her red eyes with makeup. Hides her cuts with cover up. Hides her crazed brain with that stylized hair. She forgot what it was like to be bare.  If she can just keep it up a little longer, then maybe she’s finally get stronger. Don’t bother her she needs her beauty. Sleep forever and it doesn’t really matter, because she’s got dirt on top of her and worms below her. Surrounded by earth in a beautiful dress. Protected from the earthy mess.  But no one can see her way down there (except for the worms) and they can’t tell her how beautiful she looks. She tried so hard, they said. But it just got to be too much.  We always knew she would crack. And they found her in the bathroom with her bottle of Ipecac. Put a mirror in your coffin so you can tell yourself how beautiful you look. At your reflection for eternity. “Mirror, mirror in my casket, please tell me they lined this thing with gasket.” So the worms don’t get in. And you were too beautiful to burn, like beauty from a fairytale. Beauty and the Beast. What a feast! Let’s play make-believe while you slowly churn. You can be Beauty and the Worm.