tough love

She was beautiful in a way most wouldn't understand. They could see her symetrical face, they could observe the graceful indents of her waist, the arch of her back and curve of her hand, but that all meant nothing because they couldn't see her.  It was as though she lived in the awkward pause of existence between being and not, as though the society was her sea and she was constantly struggling to come up for air.  She could accomadate this world, but not live comfortably within its bounds.

Perhaps it was because she was too harsh.  People couldn't understand her honestly, couldn't take in her bitter flavor, couldn't swallow her words that seemed to be drenched in alcohol and lit on fire. Her casual conversation was most people's 3 am drunk phone calls to a detested ex-husband.

But she didn't know how else to exist.  How else to be human, how else to survive. It was her honesty that made her beautiful, she decided.,  When she looked in the mirror she knew exactly who she was looking at.  Her sculpted arms, the sharp dash of her collarbone-there was never a question.  Looking in the mirror gave her answers.

But she was the only one who would ask the questions.  She filled her life with wants and needs, lists of goals to fufill and clothing to buy.  She stoked her closet with corsets and lace, with dresses that fell upon her hips like waterfalls, and heels that punctured the earth mercilessly.  But they did nothing for her. Everybody looked, but nobody cared. And eventually she stopped caring too. And forgot why she had begun collecting in the first place.

Collecting things because she couldn't collect people. 

 And all she ever really wanted was to be loved. And for somebody to say so.

But nobody dared to say those words

to a person they couldn't really see.