Pretty

This week in the hall at school, there were a lot of children going to and fro in class lines.
I ended up walking next to one young class.

A little girl looked up and me and said something that I wasn't sure I heard correctly,
so I said, "Excuse me, I didn't hear you."

So she said.
"You're pretty."
"I think I look like you, don't you?"

I said, "Yes. I think we do look very much alike and you are pretty."

I said it mostly for her.
Because she was.
I wondered why I felt so strange saying what I said.

"Pretty is as pretty does."
That's one of the loops that's run through my head since I was very little.

I wanted to be pretty, so did pretty.
Sometimes I did ugly, but I felt horrible.
So I tried to not do ugly anymore.
It's not a bad goal to want to be pretty inside and out.

Along the way,
after all these years of practicing,
I stopped looking at the outside.

I started only seeing the inside.
And not only in me.

Then one day, when I was walking down the hall at school,
a little girl I didn't know said to me,
"I think you're pretty."

I guess it worked.