You set your silverware down with caution, with excitement I watched as you spoke
But then you spat out it out as if I had dug a fork in your throat; the word
You had declared irrelevant, unnecessary and vain - beautiful
Unheard of in a year together, the shock hadn't even settled itself before it tumbled
Through my head, before I had a chance to think the sound was gone
It disappeared as if you had never said anything at all.

God how it had landed flat, as a young girl my imagination wanted it all,
Endless affection, compliments, just the possibility of hearing it spoke,
Could make it all okay, because the idea of loving myself had gone,
Replaced with self-hate and an egocentricity focused around one word
That would justify for all of the anxiety, all the frantic nights spent tumbled,
around the implausible prospect that maybe, one day, I would be beautiful.

Perhaps you said it to ease every inflamed nerve that centered on “beautiful”
And that’s why you choked it out, over a plate of roast beef when all
I could do was shift around my g****** potatoes, I watched as they tumbled
My throat ached if it had never been as dry, but my mouth opened and I spoke
“Thank you – but why now to say that word,
I thought by the time I would hear you say it, I would be gone.”

“Why would you think that, if one day I awoke and found you gone,
I wouldn’t know what to do.” Then why did I have to wait a year for “beautiful?”
The climax to an obsession over one word
In that moment had collapsed my expectations, buried them all
Underneath the silly fantasy revolved around three syllables; that to have it spoke
With conviction then I could convince every neurotransmitter that is tumbled

Through my nervous system to finally have a peace of mind, instead it tumbled
Around my conscious and shifted the anxiety, instead of having it gone
You transformed it into monster, I watched again as you spoke
“Is that okay? Do you believe me?” What?! DO I, THINK THAT I, AM BEAUTIFUL?
When YOU were the first to know that I when I look into a mirror, all
Of my thoughts flood at once and my brain shuts down, over that g****** word

That you yourself said would never come out of your mouth, that since the word
That I had based on my entire well-being for three years, had tumbled
Clumsily, halfheartedly out of your mouth as if you had never cared for me at all,
That somehow every doubt in my mind has now vanished, disappeared, gone,
all...because...of... beautiful?
Over an anniversary dinner, uncomfortable now, calmer now, sadder now, I spoke

“Please, do not say things that you do not mean.” Should I have said that? Yet still, you spoke. 
“Sweetheart, for me the word has no appeal. I’ll just never understand ‘beautiful.’”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I lied, I wonder if you knew, a year later, that’s why I had gone.