Looks like memory.

Feels like fraud.

Looks like joy.

Feels like guilt

creeping through my body and out my mouth.

A mouth forming a smile: fake and familiar.

My eyes scroll down the line

And I see attempts of good girls to become the best girls.

Rising higher and higher with angelic brilliance.

I remember the photos with no purpose—

The laughter bereft of humor.

I recall assimilating.

Forcing, fearing, conjuring the joy

In order to trick those peering in.

That was the memory.

Now the distance between each of us ranges

From an inch to an eternity.

The efforts remain the same.

“Once a good girl, always a good girl,”

Brings about an immediate roll of my eye.

Good girls become worse girls.

Their obsession with good makes them bad.

They snatch, receive, hoard and accept.

“You are so good” entered their ears and into their unpolluted brains.

They began to feed on it—

 Making it their hunger to be the best good girls.

I look and see a shed skin of innocence.

Peeling with the ticking of the clock.

A new faux covering willingly takes its place

And transforms, evolves, and stage four infects them from the outside in.

You wouldn’t know, however.

The good girls turned bad girls still portray,

But with their hearts frozen and only themselves on the brain.

The good things are convenient—

Require little effort—

But reap praise she foresaw from the beginning.

Good girls hide.

They take and absorb.

Good girls are misunderstood.

Good girls are brilliant.

Good girls are the worst girls.