I was always jealous of cool girls
So much so that it made me mean
Not in an outward way, not like thorns snagging anything they touch
But like venomous fangs, waiting to strike if provoked
Guarding the edges of a treasonous tongue

At the core of that jealousy 
There is a question mark and an insatiable curiosity
How do some people just know what to say?
How do some people just know how to hold themselves?
How do some people get to be cool girls?

With time and all its antivenom, 
those answers, if they exist, matter less to me now
but in my lowest moments 
sometimes my heart still coils 
protecting a memory of myself as a sixth grader getting laughed at