Leggings

Black leggings are never really black.
I watch you roll off the lint and pick off the dog fur,
trying to swipe away their past like you're
plucking the stars from your own galaxy.

You are meticulous in everything,
trying to gain something out of reach,
promising yourself that if you can just achieve
an imposing solid black,
something will click in your world,
something you didn't have before.

To you, the dust is a disgrace,
a barrier to a world of perfection
that maybe, one day, you can break down.

Because for you, your world isn't enough.
You tell yourself that with lint on your leggings
you're failing yourself, keeping yourself down,
you tell yourself you will never be beautiful,
that you'll never be able to fly.

But you're beautiful when you stand with those you love
and you laugh and you don't worry about whether or not
your smile looks crooked.

You're beautiful when you touch your pencil to paper
and capture the world in graphite, only for yourself,
not caring whether someone is watching.

And you fly, you do, when you glow with pride
when you know you've done something amazing
when you let yourself know without
finding every tiny imperfection to deny it.

So black leggings are never really black
because if they were perfect
they wouldn't be you.