I’m writing this at eleven o’clock on a school night and counting on the chance that it will help you. I’m writing this because I need a miracle, desperately, and I’m hoping that you’ll somehow fill this void with your spirit, which is still capable of every impossible thing. I’m writing this because I’m defining beauty, yet again, by putting myself in a place where eyes are focused on the backdrop, and words sound clear and free. It’s a delightful place, but too often the people who go there are like me, too terrified of their words to let them run across their minds any longer. So then sometimes it’s a scary place, too, because everyone’s fears are sprinting down the same track of metaphors and desperate adjectives. It’s hard to really be there.
But I’m asking you to be here with me, because I’m only a seventeen-year-old girl and I’m not too good with directions; I might not be able to find you. Especially when it’s so hard to make your words retrace their steps; they need a little push in the wrong direction. Here’s where we are. We’re in a blurry memory of twelve months ago that tastes like hot apple cider. It’s warm and comforting, and somewhere a cinnamon stick is bleeding sweetness and spice. It’s nice to be in this memory; I revert to it quite often. We’re watching from just above, somewhere in the translucent ceiling. A girl with thick wavy brown hair, dimples in her pink cheeks and freckles below hazel eyes is sitting cross-legged on the piano bench. I think she’s wearing a blue cardigan and sweatpants; her hair might be in two braids down her back. She’s pounding chords on the out-of-tune apartment piano and singing in a little voice. It’s a slow country song about unrequited love, and her eyes are wet with relevance to the boy with eyes like oceans and his sunny laugh. She doesn’t realize it now, but he’s thinking about her too, to some other song. But let’s pretend she knows. Let’s create that incredible feeling of happiness and hand it to her as a gift and watch her unwrap it again and fall in love with its magic. I like doing that, too.
Now you must come forward with me; or rather, back to the present. We’re watching from directly within. A girl with thin greasy brown hair, pale cheeks, and tired eyes is sitting at her computer desk playing with memories in the same way that a child plays with a dollhouse. She’s listening to a love song that the blue-eyed boy sang in a hopeful voice and it should be breaking her heart but it’s not; not really. She runs her hands through her hair and it comes out in ten, twenty, thirty strands at once. Something about starving yourself does that, two or three months after it’s all over and she thinks she’s in the clear, to remind her how stupid it was to try and cut corners on the messy trail of self-esteem.
Stupid girl, you should have known.
It’s easy for her to sit at her piano now and sing those words to herself and say she’s so, so sorry.
It’s really easy to feel remorseful, when you’re stuck.
But she can’t really do that, because she’s still in the same world.
You can. The impossible is still a wonderful challenge to you, you can look at yourself in the mirror and find all those beautiful things and not cheat your way to a sense of worth.
You can be my miracle.
