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You can always feel it scratching underneath your skin. Whenever she looks at anyone else, whenever so much as a smile forms on her face or a word drips from her lips like honey for anyone but you.
It even threatens to consume you, when you see her in another beautiful dress, shining like the constellations shaped themselves just for her. When she’s shimmering in a suit, the most beautiful person in the room. She’s better than you. You feel it like bile clawing at your throat, like blood bubbling under your skin.
Your sisters understand, and that’s what makes you hate it even more. They know everything. They’re better at existence than you. They have no time for envy, no time for such petty feelings.
It’s all you are.
She places her arm on a young man’s arm, and you wish to rip it off, to scorn him for daring to believe he could be worthy of her mere touch.
You wish you could in any universe amount to her. The poison erupts from your lips, the room drenched in green and fear and rage.
Still, she sees you. She chooses to spend her nights with you, even when all you can spit is acid and all you feel is the scales that judge you every moment of every day. She puts on her dresses, just for you, and you try to not flinch.
She’s so beautiful. It hurts.
One day, you’ll become too much. One day the venom within will show in your eyes, in your skin. You’ll be nothing but what they call you. She’ll leave.
And you’ll know you’re not enough.