i have spent my life among beautiful things.

little pink shells with their blushing mouths,
pearled shells with their delicate spirals,
shells the sun seemed to kiss more tenderly
than it ever kissed me.

and oh, how i wished to be them.

i wished for a lovelier shape,
a rarer color,
something that might make a stranger
bend down and forget the rest of the shore.

for what is a shell, after all,
but something waiting to be found?
something the sea has loved and abandoned,
left among a thousand others
to be admired, compared, or overlooked.

i did not know that i had begun
to see myself through the eyes of strangers.

i only knew that whenever a hand reached for another,
i wondered what was missing in me.

perhaps i should have been pinker.
perhaps my edges should have curled more delicately.
perhaps i should have been the sort of shell
a girl presses to her cheek
before placing it in her little basket.

i never considered
that someone might love the shape i had.

somewhere, a lover was walking along the shore.

i like to imagine he was looking for me
before he knew i existed.

perhaps he had a picture in his mind
of something small enough to fit in his palm,
something the color of a fading rose,
something imperfect in a way
he would never have thought to ask for.

perhaps he had already passed
a hundred lovelier things.

and then his eyes fell upon me.

i wonder what he saw.

the little fracture near my edge?
the pale pink hidden beneath the salt?
the strange, uneven hollow
where the sea had once made its home?

did he turn me over in his hands
as though i were a question
he had finally found the answer to?

did he smile?

i think about that sometimes,
how a hand can change the whole world of a thing.

how one moment i could have remained
among the shells the tide would eventually reclaim,
and the next, i could be carried away
in the pocket of someone
who wanted to remember that morning.

he would take me home.

perhaps he would place me beside his books,
where the late afternoon light
would settle into my little crevices.

perhaps beside a vase of peonies,
their heavy pink heads bowing
as though they knew something about being loved.

perhaps on the windowsill,
where the rain would tap against the glass
and i could watch the world
without longing to return to it.

i imagine the little life i would enter:
his keys tossed carelessly by the door,
a half-read book turned face down,
the faint scent of coffee lingering in the room.

and perhaps, one day,
he would pick me up absentmindedly
while searching for something else,
rolling me between his fingers
as though i had always belonged there.

i would learn the shape of his hands
better than i had ever known my own.

and slowly,
the shore would become a place
i remembered
rather than somewhere
i wished to be different.

though i know there are shells more beautiful than me.

some will be pinker, rarer,
their spirals more delicate,
their surfaces shining like little pieces of heaven
washed ashore by a merciful god.

someone will find them extraordinary.

someone will carry them home.

i hope they are loved there, too.

and i wonder about the ones left behind,
the little shells no one bends to collect,
the ones the evening tide covers
before anyone has noticed them.

i hope they do not spend their whole lives
mistaking the absence of a hand
for the absence of beauty.

i hope, somewhere beyond the water,
there are people who will love them, too.

because perhaps that is what i could not understand
when i was still lying in the sand:
the shore was never a competition
with only one place to win.

there were a thousand shells,
and the world was wide enough
to hold a thousand different kinds of lovely.

my lover did not have to find me
more beautiful than everything else.

he only had to find something in me
that made him want to stay.

and perhaps he would never know
how to explain it.

perhaps he would simply turn me over in his palm
and say that he liked me.

that he saw me among a thousand shells
and wanted me.

and i think that would be enough.

his hands would remind me
of the girl i had been all along,
whole and quietly lovely,
even in the years
when no one stopped to look.

i was a shell before his hands found me.

i was a shell when the tide passed over me,
when strangers walked by,
when the sun dried the salt upon my back.

i was a shell when nobody looked.

the sea is still out there,
wide and restless,
making and unmaking beautiful things.

let it.

let the waves return for my sisters.
let the shore fill with a thousand more.
let the world discover things
more extraordinary than it has ever seen.

i have no wish to be the only beautiful thing.

i only wish i had known, sooner,
that i could be one of them
without having to be the most beautiful.

and if he ever asks me
what i remember of the sea,
i will tell him about the waves,
the salt,
the endless blue.

but i will not tell him
how long i spent believing
i had to be something else
to deserve a home.

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they’re not real. i bought them from a girl
who sold jewelry outside the bookshop.
she told me they were vintage,
which is a nice word for things
that have already belonged to someone else.

i liked that.

i like imagining a woman wearing them
to dinner with a man she loved,
him reaching across the table
to brush a crumb from the corner of her mouth,
her taking them off that night,
one by one, still thinking about his hands.

i like imagining things.
it’s my worst habit, probably.

i give ordinary things
a whole life before they get to me.
a history, a heartbreak, a reason to be kept.
perhaps i want to believe
that things can be loved long before
anyone knows what they’ll become.

anyway, you would hate my room.

there’s a pink ribbon tied around the lamp,
a little porcelain angel with a broken wing,
three books i keep meaning to finish,
and a perfume that smells like roses
after they’ve been left in the sun.

the curtains never hang properly.
the mirror makes me look prettier at night.
i have a collection of things
that don’t do anything except make me happy,
which is to say, they do everything.

sometimes i sit on the floor in my nightgown
and listen to the same song until it stops
sounding like a song and starts sounding
like somewhere i used to live.

i wonder what your room looks like.

whether you throw your clothes on a chair
or fold them before bed.
whether you sleep with the window open.
whether you have a favorite cup.
whether there’s a version of you
that nobody at college gets to see.

i wonder if you’re gentler when you’re tired,
if you talk to yourself when you’re alone,
if you have a little collection of things, too,
something sentimental
you’d be embarrassed to explain.

i want to know the unimportant things about you.
especially the unimportant things.

what you look like when you first wake up,
before you’ve remembered who you’re supposed to be.
if you sing when you’re driving.
if your mother still tells you
to take a jacket when it’s cold.

i want to be someone you tell things to
without thinking about it first.

isn’t that an awful thing to want?
to become a habit in somebody else’s life.

to have a cup in their kitchen
that they reach for without looking.
to be the first person they think of
when something funny happens.
to hear a car outside and think,
oh, he must be here.

i’d be so good at being loved in little ways.
i’d remember how you take your tea.
i’d save you the last piece of cake
and pretend i didn’t want it.
i’d learn the difference between your silences,
the one that means you’re tired
and the one that means something is wrong.

i’d never make you explain
the things you don’t have words for yet.

god, listen to me.
i’ve made a whole home out of a man
who has never even been inside my house.

i do this, by the way.
start with a dish of pearls
and end up furnishing a house for a man
who doesn’t even know where i live.
my mind is a little girl with a pair of scissors,
cutting pictures out of magazines
and pasting them into a life that doesn’t exist.

i should probably take the scissors away from her.

tonight i put on perfume before bed,
just a little behind my ears,
where nobody will notice.
i brushed my hair a hundred times
and put the pearls around my neck
to see what i’d look like
if somebody was taking me somewhere nice.

nobody was.

i took them off and placed them back
in their little dish.
somewhere outside, a dog was barking.
the neighbor’s television was still on.
the world continued without knowing anything about me.

i lay there thinking about your hands.

not what you’d do with them.
just that they’re yours.
that you walk around with them all day,
open doors, hold your phone,
turn the pages of books,
and i have never once been held by them.

i don’t know why that makes me sad.
it just does.

i think if you loved me,
i’d be embarrassed for the first few weeks.
i’d keep asking if you were sure,
convinced someone would eventually come
to take me back where i belonged.

then i’d get used to it.

i’d let you see me without mascara.
i’d fall asleep halfway through a film.
i’d steal your shirts and leave hair ties
on your bedside table.
i’d stop checking the mirror
before you looked at me.

imagine that.
being looked at without preparing for it.

being wanted on an ordinary tuesday,
with dirty hair and a headache
and nothing interesting to say.

i think i’d cry the first time.

not beautifully, either.
i’d probably have to blow my nose.
you’d laugh, and i’d tell you to shut up,
and you’d kiss my forehead
like it was the easiest thing in the world.

i wish i could stop making you
into somebody who would understand me.

maybe you wouldn’t.
maybe you’d see the pink room,
the pearls, the little angel,
and think i was silly.
maybe you’d find me too quiet,
too much in my head,
too full of feelings i don’t know
what to do with once i’ve made them.

maybe you’d like someone else.

i know.
i know.

look at me changing the subject again.
i started with being loved
and somehow arrived at being left.
i wish my mind would stop taking the long way home.
there are perfectly good roads,
and yet here i am, wandering through the dark
with a bouquet of things that haven’t happened.

i keep the pearls on my windowsill anyway.

in the morning, sunlight gets inside them
and makes little white circles on the wall.
they look like tiny moons.
i move them around sometimes
just to watch the light follow.

i think that’s what i do with everything.
find something pretty,
put it somewhere close,
and hope the light stays.

you walked past me today,
wearing that serious expression again,
the one that makes me wonder
what could possibly be happening in your head.

i wanted to ask you something.
anything.
i wanted to hear you say my name
and find out if it sounded different
coming from your mouth.

instead, i went home.
i took off my shoes.
i washed my face.
i put my pearls back in their dish.

now i’m here,
in my pink room,
wearing perfume for nobody,
thinking about a boy
who might be sitting somewhere
not thinking about me at all.

it’s all a little ridiculous.

but if you knocked on my door tonight,
i’d open it.

i’d probably be wearing the wrong thing.
my hair would be a mess.
i’d move a book off the chair
and apologize for the state of the room.

you’d say it’s fine.

and i’d look at you,
standing there in the doorway,
real and warm and not made of anything
i’d had to invent myself,

and i’d think,

oh.

so this is where i’ve been
trying to get to.

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for emerald meadows, lush and tender, where we might lie side by side, watching the clouds wander across a silver-grey sky..

for long, rain-drenched streets, shimmering beneath the dim glow of streetlamps, where the world grows quiet and a single umbrella is all we need to keep the rain from our faces..

for the hush of winter afternoons, the mist gathering on windowpanes, the pale skies stretching endlessly above us, and the warmth of your hand slipping into mine when the cold begins to settle..

for snow-covered mornings that give us every reason to linger in each other’s arms, to steal another moment before the world calls us back, to pretend that the frost upon the windows is reason enough to never let go..

i long for leisurely walks with nowhere in particular to go, for little cafés with fogged-up windows, for the scent of rain on the pavement, and for the kind of love that turns the most unremarkable afternoon into a memory worth keeping for a lifetime…

i yearn for the tender familiarity of your presence, for the quiet comfort of sitting beside you without a word to say, for stolen glances across a crowded room, and for all the little things that would mean the world simply because they belonged to us..

oh, to have you in a world that asks so little of us..
to wander through its rainy streets, to watch its winters turn white, to grow accustomed to the sound of your laughter, and to find, in the most ordinary corners of life, a thousand reasons to fall in love with you all over again..

perhaps that is all i have ever wished for..
a little green grass, a cloudy sky, a long street washed clean by the rain, one umbrella held between us, and a winter cold enough to make our endless embraces seem perfectly reasonable..

i don't know what sweet things taste like on your tongue,
if you let them melt or if you bite.
i don't know how music sounds in your ears.
i don't know how rain feels on your skin.
i don't know what you think magic is.
i only know i look for you in every room before i take my coat off.

tonight i walked home under the cherry blossoms
and let them fall in my hair on purpose.
the clouds kept covering the moon, then letting her out,
covering her, then letting her out,
and i stood there like it was being done to me.

and the pearls came loose, one, then another,
round and warm out of the shells behind my lashes,
and i let them fall into the grass
like i could afford to lose them.
nobody here to string them.

you don't know i'm out here.
i saw you talking to them,
and when i looked at you, you cleared your throat.
was that me? the sugar in your throat?
or am i imagining things because i'm lonely?
i'm not lonely, though.
i have my music, and my little fish
in her small frame in my pocket,
so she isn't forgotten.

i am sugar. i've always been sugar.
the little white bowl with the tiny spoon,
the grit at the bottom of the cup, what's left once you've had what you came for,
the thing people reach for when the day was bitter
and forget the minute it's stirred in.
i dissolve. i do it so quietly
you'd think the tea was always sweet.

what i want is so small it embarrasses me.
i want you to sit next to me and talk.
about anything. the bus. your mother. what you hate for breakfast.
i want to watch your mouth make words
and know they're coming to me.

and if you wanted more than that,
if your hand wanted the back of my neck, my waist,
i wouldn't stop you. i'd be so quiet and so willing,
a ribbon already undone.
but i'd take the talking. i would take just the talking.

when you look at me it's like walking on the moon.
no gravity, no sound, my heartbeat the loudest thing for miles.
the clouds close over it and i think, there, it's gone,
then it's back, and i think, still here, still here.
i know it's a rock. i know no one lives there.
i'd move in anyway.

in the version in my head, every bolt of lightning
that ever touched the earth finds us both,
and finally, finally, the electricity has somewhere to go.
in the real one i'm the ground.
i take it. i stay quiet. i stay scorched,
and i lay a petal over the burn.

i'm so tired of wanting something this soft.
sugar was never built for rain,
and i keep leaving myself out in it, lid off, hoping.

i'm still under the tree, in the wrong shoes,
not leaving, in case.

if you walked by right now
i wouldn't say a word about any of it.
i'd just move over on the grass.
i'd let you ask what i'm looking at,
and i'd say the moon, and you'd say where,
and i'd have to lean in close to show you.

that's all. that's the whole wish.
the sugar, out in the open air,
lid off, knowing about the rain,
waiting for you to sit down.

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the sky goes pink and everyone gets sentimental.
i'm on the bathroom floor in a slip with a safety pin in the strap,
peony petals stuck to my thighs,
a candle burning down in a plastic cup.
half the fairy lights are dead. so am i, a little. it's fine.

they say i'm marie antoinette's daughter
and aphrodite's. i say yes,
i want the cake and i want it with my hands
and i don't care who's watching.

but you're not watching, are you.
you're across the room laughing at something that isn't me,
and i've built a whole person out of that laugh.

i don't know you.
i've decided you take your coffee black.
i've decided you're gentle in the dark
and mean about it in the morning.
i've decided your hands are warm,
and i've given them somewhere to be.

i say your name in the mirror to see how it fits in my mouth
and it's just a name. it's all i have.
i've never even heard you say mine.

you'd think i was cotton candy.
i'm sticky. i dissolve in the rain.
in the version where you touch me,
i leave pink on your collar, on your pillow,
on the inside of your wrist
where you'd find it tuesday in a meeting
and have to look at the table.

the halo's in the trash.
i kept the wings. they're good for hiding under
while i tell everyone i'm fine, i'm fine, i'm so fine,
and you say nothing, because you've never met me,
and i love you anyway. i'm ridiculous. i know.

dream about me when the sky turns pink.
i'll be awake, barefoot,
wanting someone i made up out of almost nothing.
you'll never know it was you.

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