"never"

The clusters of stardust

that shoot through my veins

are

not enough;

I am

not enough-

I have overcome

enough

but of course it was the silent sort

of overcoming,

never the one from which you hear

a helpless young woman

gasping for air

and screaming for help.

Rather,

it was the one in which you barely see

the invisible young woman

who refused to ask for any help

because she feared, more than anything,

being seen

as what she knew she was.

They never told her

that she was beautiful with,

only beautiful despite,

they never told her

that she was smart because,

only smart despite

so she hid the very parts of her

that made her the three-dimensional sculpture

that rested in the classroom and never stopped in the library,

she never saw herself for what she was,

for the nebulas and the galaxies

and the chemicals all working miraculously to keep herself alive

but instead all she felt were the pounding headaches

and the trying

to keep up the facade of what she knew she would never be.