The Loveliness of Being

 

I am not delicate.

I’ve always been a little too much of something

and not enough of everything else.

A little too quiet

and far too loud,

pretty

but not too pretty,

smart

but not smart enough.

 

See, the problem with me

is I have always been too

harsh,

unforgiving,

severe,

like the sunlight in your eyes during a hangover;

something that should have been soft

but wasn’t soft at all.

 

Perhaps that’s why

I’ve taken to standing

on the roof of my house

when it rains,

because I hope that

the storm will blow me

paper-thin,

and then I’ll just feel

this weightlessness,

this incredible lightness of being,

that comes with being

delicate.

 

Can you imagine that?

 

My eyes will be cool and pale,

pearly like daisy petals,

and my bones–

oh, how they will

rise to the surface of my skin,

shyly at first,

like a bashful virgin

gazing up through her eyelashes

at her lover,

and then with growing confidence;

they will ripple within me,

blades of grass breathing in the wind,

and for the first time,

I will believe that these bones of mine exist,

because I wasn’t sure before.

But now, I can see them,

and what lovely bones they are!

 

I will float

from the lightness

in my stomach,

and my heartbeat will

grow faint with time,

until eventually I find

that it ceases altogether,

because lately,

I’ve been feeling less

with my heart

and more with my eyes;

my heart never felt

what my eyes chose not to see.

I have taught those eyes

of mine

to only see the beauty

because the ugly

reminds me too much

of what I was like before.

 

How divine I will be–

a dwindling woman–

with these dainty wrists

and exquisite collarbones,

swaying to the low hum

of dead poet’s voices

singing love songs

on the record player.

And I will be thin as smoke,

and white as snow,

like Ophelia,

with flowers

in my hair

and water in my lungs,

because sometimes

I think I might drown myself

when I don’t feel lovely enough.

 

And I will only wear light colours;

periwinkles and lilacs,

silvers and greys–

the colour of cobwebs.

And when they all see me,

they will gasp,

because they will think

that I look astonishingly similar

to a butterfly.

And I will be graceful,

and elegant,

and some man will be able

to sweep me up into his arms

as if I were a feather,

and he will be able to look deep

into my hollow eyes without flinching,

because they always say

everything feels so much better

when you are thin–

and how right they  are!

I will be delighted

at how little I have become,

because he will be able

to fit has hands all the way around

my waist,

and when he spins me

as we dance,

he will admire how fragile

I am,

because ‘they don’t make

women like that these  days.’

 

I will be simply dizzy

from how slender I’ll be,

for I will never have felt so

significant before,

in all my years

of existing.

I’ll be like

the fluffy white seeds

of dying dandelions–

the ones you make wishes on

when you’re just a kid,

and I will hang,

bobbing,

in the breeze,

waiting to be planted and grow roots

that stretch down past the ashes

from the parade of lost souls

that are buried beneath the ground.

I’ll be so soft,

and light.

 

And I’ll be top-filled

to the brim

with the most remarkable loveliness

that only comes

with being

delicate.

 

Isn’t that a wonderful thought?


Swan Lake