I’m looking at her,
And I remember the thoughts she shared with me after the sun had set.
She looked so beautiful, she did—with moonlight tucked within her braid and stars scattered across her cheeks--but she would look at me, eyes full of sadness and discontent.
“I want to be loved,” she said. “I’m not very pretty, but if someone would notice me, and choose to stay, despite my faults…” and she would trail off, and I was always at a loss for words because I struggle even to like myself.
And now, two years past—
I see the boys, tumbling in after the other, professing love and offering sex, and when she denies the one, she gives in to the others, and repeatedly tries to say, “This is my penance. I will never be happy, but someone wants me, and shouldn’t this be enough?”
And I look at her, her smile bright in the camera and eyes hiding everything so no one sees, and think, “Why did you worry so much? Why couldn’t you have lived a little? Why didn’t you delete Instagram and stop looking for his view on your stories? Why didn’t you throw the phone away and go to bookstores on your own?? Why didn’t you just say, 'Screw you all' and choose to be happy??”
But I’m not sure she’d have known how to be happy. I know she tried. She did. And I can’t say much because I’m sad even now, with or without the memories.
But I wish that you’d have known that you did not have to be seen by someone else,
That you were so beautiful all on your own,
And that the only person who needed to love you,
The only person whose gaze would make you feel whole again,
was you.
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