There are benefits I suppose to being ugly. The face that launched a thousand ships belonged to someone else. I smiled and simpered and got through high school but I was a weapon by then, I was a spider. I was waiting in the shadows of this life because everything inside the well that is my life had been excavated for someone else to use or discard. Ugly girls are a waste of space. No matter that I was beautiful for a time. If your parents teach you to hide your face, you will listen, and agree. Now there is never time for all the lives I want to lead. I was trained to believe all the world would be better off without me. I write love letters to nobody and I hide my love like I hide my pain. My love is held inside the wrong body, I suppose. Men daydream of Israeli models with blonde hair and long legs. I am the girl shaped like my parents’ basement. I should have crawled my way out long ago but then, nobody ever really fights the witch hunters when they show up at your doorstep. You bow your head. And you go. Everyone knows that you deserve it. Whatever they do to you. Everyone knows it’s all your fault. Including you.