“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, baby girl.” Nina turns her back to her grandmother’s words and faces the mirror to add another pound of makeup to her already flawless face and thinks of how there ain’t no beholders out there, just niggaz.

“You don’t have to show so much of your goodies, precious. In my day…” The words fall on deaf ears; Nina’s living for today.

“Girl, you can barely walk in those heels and your top is so low. Is that a nipple?!? You’re a pretty girl; you don’t have to dress like that. You’ll only attract the wrong attention.” Nina rolls her eyes so hard it almost pops out her green contact lens. Nina barely loves Nina. The attention she seeks acts as the pacifier to her self-esteem cries.

“One day you’re going to wake up and find out that a time can not rewind, while you’re out chasing things, seems like you’re flying right past your dreams.”

Dreams. Dreams? What dreams? “Bye Grandma.”

He may not be Mr. Right but he’s Mr. Right Now and she knows it. So she adjusts her top, a tug down, so her sand dunes tease the riverbank, raises her shoulders to the sky, and arches her lower back to accent the southern hemisphere’s mountain peak. If only she saw the beauty in Mother Earth. It’s all for sale, her heart, body and soul for the price of a positive feeling. Just to be wanted like water to thirst. Staring off into space, she tries to remember what she used to be, could have been, should have been. A “Pretty Girl” lost, floating through space not realizing the essence of her time. Beauty may not last forever, forever ever, forever ever…

“Were you hurt by love before? Too much pain for your heart to endure; is that why you hide behind a disguise?” Women are the sponges of emotional discard. They absorb all the heartrending dirty water from relationships. They don’t always have the tough skin to learn the lesson and let it roll off. Women carry that waste, baggage with them through life hoping to purge it once they find that dream situation, love, house, job, car… But when no dream manifests, the sponge overflows, creates a puddle and she drowns in the emptiness of her self worth.

Nothing in life is free. Don’t let your price cost you your self-respect. In the meantime, the in-between time, use your beauty as a blessing that demands admiration, not a curse that doesn’t warrant it. There’s mystery in modesty. Take first-class care of your mind, body and soul, and dream big. The bigger the dreams the better; so when your little dreams come true, you’ll always have room for more.

“Follow your heart and not others, and you will find your place. If they go that way, simply go left…”
-Eric Roberson