Sometimes, I feel jealous—of the rasp and the spike in their loud voices, of the jeans tight on their skin, of the darker shade of mascara around their eyes. Someone rings them each night like their own personal nightingale, a deep and heavy birdsong talking them to sleep.
Uber drivers pull up whenever they want to leave, and half of me almost wants to grab them by the golden bangle around their wrists and say:
"Gurllllll, isn’t that only for emergencies? Like maybe when it’s raining, or you’re late (and not just any late), or the night looks scary, or when you bleed?"
But I don’t. I just wave them goodbye and watch from the window—like a cat staring at its owner as they leave.
And maybe this is when it hits me—something about the girl left behind, staring out the window. She turns the lamps on in my soul, kerosene over wick, lighting a match. My, oh my.
She speaks gently, her voice like feathers in the ears. Rivers in her heart flow through her eyes—when she’s angry, when Núñez scores at 90’ (+6), when God lets out the crows against the yellow, picture-perfect silhouette skies.
Her friends like to tell her she’s a good person, and she wishes she could see herself through their eyes. What do they see in her 5’2” frame, in the 47 kilos she carries? Sometimes, she feels like a sea of longing and nostalgia, collecting handwritten notes and old photos of people she may not always know—like looking for something you lost in 1994, only you weren’t born yet.
She’s so deep, man. You’ll drown.
I love her so.
When she cried at a family dinner table but held a smile at a funeral, I loved her.
When she got too anxious and greeted her professor with Marhaba instead of Shikamoo, I loved her.
When she found the crimson moon on her dress and hid it for days,
I loved her,
I loved her,
I loved her.
And I love her now—when she just tried her first-ever glass of Drostdy-Hof dry red (her inner monologue whispering, "Are we going to hell?").
And I will love her into every future, like playing a note that sounds so good in a song we’ve been writing our whole life.
I love this
I would say a beautiful love letter to herself🌹