Sometimes Better

My mama must have got the fortune for me, before my birth, It must have said, you will never be pretty, And you will be cut off from your real roots forever. I felt disingenuous throughout childhood, and embarrassingly ugly; So ugly a dog should have buried me and forget the whereabouts. One day many years later, out of the blue, my mother said, You were not a pretty baby, Not like your baby was; no, you weren't pretty at all. Never would anybody have said, that you were pretty. I wondered then at where my idea of profound inferiority Had arisen from; Was it within her mind, and from there it entered mine Or had I discovered it entirely on my own, In front of the mirrors or looking at the photos, Because I did not resemble any of my relatives- The roots had all been cut at birth, you see? But our friends daughters surely had it worse; Pretty enough, and good Caucasian twigs, to be sure. But their fortunes must have said, you will never be loved for yourself; And they were never happy in their marriages And their husbands kept waiting for the quarters to start pouring Out of the jackpot slots, because their daddy was a rich man. Being ugly and poor must sometimes be better?