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Grade
10

 

One: self-portrait

There are times when the beauty of the world is right there. The entire universe is exquisite and up close and personal. Beauty is right in your face, and you don’t have to find it. The universe comes knocking at your door.

I think this is one of those moments. I’m not quite sure, though. I’m not sure how these moments are characterized, or if they exist at all. If they do exist, however, I more often realize it when I am with her.

Bella is drawing herself today. Her ebony pencil slowly shapes the form, roughly in broad strokes. I hear her exasperated sighs and see the frequency with which she shakes her head. She isn’t pleased, and it is evident as she glances in the huge mirror resting in front of her.

For some reason, she doesn’t like it, but I think it is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

The sunlight streams in through the windows to her right. I lay behind her on the bed with tangled sheets. I examine her in the mirror as she examines herself, then looks down and fills in a shadow at the base of neck.

I wonder what she is thinking. To be honest, I wonder this constantly.

One of my favorite things about her is how she inspires me, and how her way of thinking allows my mind to grow. She is so eloquent when she is speaking with passion. When I hear her speak, I have everything to say. I look at her for seconds and to me it feels like days.

She abruptly stops and glances at me before closing her eyes and sighing. “I can’t get this right.” She has pivoted away from her unfinished piece and now sits hugging her knees facing me. This is a moment I will come back to later and miss: the golden morning light on her hair, the dark strokes on the creamy paper, the faint sounds of the city outside this small bright room.

Her eyelashes rest gently on her cheeks as she sits, motionless. She has lost motivation to draw and I know from experience she will not want to work on this any more. It is an end, and I allow a moment of sadness for what could have been before letting the thought whirl away.

Instead, I look at her.

Eyes still closed, face incredibly open. From my position on the bed, I admire her, relishing this moment where I can look at her freely before she opens her eyes.

 

Two: golden light

Bella’s name swirls out of one’s mouth like a beautiful golden vine blooming up the side of a house. It is a name I cannot stop saying.

I have known this girl for three weeks and I think I am in love. I am unquestionably a hopeless romantic, but there is something about her that makes me think this is different.

Bella glances at me, and I catch her eye and smile. She smiles back and then hides her face in her shoulder while looking up at me. We communicate in smiles and eye contact, and while I don’t know how we became so comfortable together so quickly, I am not complaining.

It is my favorite time of day: the hour before the sun sets, where everything is lit with a light that seems brighter than the rest of the day. This dying sunlight hits her face through the dirty window pane. She sits in the chair serenely as I draw her.

The light illuminates her face, turning her eyelashes golden and her eyes clear and empty. I concentrate and return to the drawing. With loose strokes, I fill her irises with value, capturing the light in them and their transparent quality.

I start on her hair. This is easy, and does not take much concentration. I allow myself to detach from the mechanisms of what I am doing and feel, taking in the texture of the paper and the slight breeze from the open sliver of window. Bella’s hair catches in it, lifted into the air before just as quickly falling back down.

My gaze moves from her hair to her face. Being with her allows me to experience a meditative, reflective calm, one that I am hard pressed to find anywhere else. I am entirely comfortable with her, and it is an incredible feeling. There are no pretenses. There is just her and me.

I don’t know how I’ve become attached so quickly, but I am sure it is in part due to our conversations. Talking to new people fills me with excitement and exhilaration. She is no exception: I want to know her fully. Learning about and slowly falling in love with someone is one of the best feelings.

Her voice pulls me out of my reverie: “How far are you?” Genuinely curious. She isn’t impatient, exactly, but I have been in her position and know how she feels. Sitting for a figure drawing can be tedious and makes the muscles tense.

“Just finishing the hair,” I say back, and I see her unwind as she closes her eyes, the tiniest flutter of the eyelashes as they fall to rest. She looks drowsy, and I wonder if she is sleeping as I finish the drawing.

It doesn’t take long for me to complete the hair, and after carefully setting my sketchbook and pencil on the floor next to me I join her by the window. The sun is setting now. All that is visible is faint orange above the building.

She looks up at me. I look down at her. “I love you,” she says softly, and then smiles and curls farther into the chair as she begins to sleep.

I do not believe in soulmates, but I do believe that there are people you are meant to meet, whether they are friends or lovers or both or all.

And I know she is one of them. And I am so glad we have met.

 

Three: things I cannot explain

I love Bella endlessly. Some part of this love must come from the effect being with her has on me. Because I am so comfortable with her, I am not worried or distracted with irrelevant things. When we are together I experience each moment completely.

There are many unforgettable moments, and I surround myself with them. I become caught up in nostalgia and comfortable with the idea that I will never have to leave. It is a wonderful thing to be able to visit memories you miss, and to surround yourself with past happiness. I remember the times where my vision of the world was clearer because all I could focus on was her. In my mind, we live infinitely happy.

But I was so tangled in the threads of memory that I could not see what was happening now. Living in the past seems attractive on paper, but it isn’t so appealing when you forget about the present.

I was removed from real life, so of course it is an incredible shock when Bella says she wants to see other people. She says this isn’t working. She says she isn’t sure she was ever in love with me, and that it is possible she was just reflecting all of the love I gave to her.

I say nothing. I cannot find words to express how I feel.

“I am sorry,” she says. “I will treasure these experiences with you for the rest of my life. I just don’t think this is what’s right for me right now.”

I say nothing. I am not crying. Right now all I feel is shock. My thoughts go in a circle: This isn’t real. This can’t be real.

She starts to cry, hopeless little sobs. I feel a sudden tinge of anger: she has no right to cry. It is my heart that has been broken, not hers. It is later that I realize that we will both have to endure something broken.

She leaves some time later, opening the door and letting the cold air rush in. She hesitates on the doorstep. When she looks back at me, unmoving, a flicker of something passes across her face. Total misery present for a second only. And then she turns away, closes the door softly, and is gone.

I do not wonder where she is going. That night, I fall asleep right away.

This apartment without her feels off. It was never ours, but I am angry with her for being here often enough to make me think that it was. It’s an irrational anger. Her absence hasn’t fully registered with me yet. I know she is gone. I am completely certain of that fact, but I am still in shock. I can’t bring myself to draw her, but every time I bring my pencil to the paper and close my eyes her face sears behind my eyelids. So I stop drawing.

I do not miss her, yet. Instead I wonder when she will be coming home.

Sometimes when I look over art I’ve drawn and words I’ve written I am filled with an odd desire to present it all to her. Like everything I’ve created I created for that purpose: to show to her, to give to her, so she can know me more fully. To give myself to her one piece at a time.

I want to tell her everything. I want to take all the thoughts contained in my mind and describe them to her with an eloquence I have yet to achieve. It is difficult: when it comes to describing how I feel about her, words will always fall short.

I want to tell her this:

There is a girl who writes words which spill forth from her pencil like waves crashing on the beach.

I know a boy who can play piano with the most incredible emotion, a performance which lingers in your mind far after the ringing of the final note.

A girl with pale expressive aquamarine eyes can draw people who dream in gardens of flowers with only a few strokes of a pen.  

The most beautiful thing I have ever seen is the wildflowers after the rain, high up in the mountains. I can’t describe the colors or how I felt when I looked at them; I can’t describe elation that bursts forth and whirls in the mind.

But this beauty doesn’t matter.

But none of this compares to her.

 

Four: Bella

It isn’t raining when the doorbell rings, but it should be. The weather is too bright for how I feel.

I know it is her because whenever anyone rings the doorbell, I peer out the window and lean to the side precariously to see who it is. When I see her face, her dark collar coat turned against the chill, I wish it wasn’t her. But immediately I take that thought back.

In a very short time I have flung myself from the window and jumped down the set of stairs and am standing in front of the door. One small pane of glass set into the frame reveals the sun and cloudless sky outside. I take a barely-audible breath and open the door.

There are flashes of memory, of light and color and beautiful noise, as I look at her. For one second, it is golden, like her hair in the summer. And then it is dark like nights spent trying to draw her face with my eyes closed. Everything spins and swirls past my vision as I stand and look into her eyes. This is less than a second and somehow more than my lifetime all at once. How do you measure the moments when time stops? You don’t.

Here she is.

Everything feels flimsy and fragile. Time feels tangible.

She is here. She is her. The sun hits her hair and eyelashes and I have a sudden urge to draw. I want to be doing something with this feeling, and it is a wonderful day full of possibility. I am terrified.

Bella. She is in my mind constantly, but I still have awful moments when I forget who she is. I can’t imagine not knowing her. The way she thinks and feels is intoxicating to me. That’s undoubtedly selfish, but she inspires me and helps me and my mind grow. The experiences we shared were some of the best of my life. I love her, fully and openly.

And here she is. On my doorstep. We are right back where we started, I think with distaste. And I have never liked circles.

But I have always liked her.

Thoughts burst through my brain. I recognize somewhere in the back of my mind that the breeze is warm and humid and I should open the window in my bedroom so it doesn’t become stuffy. But all throughout my mind is recognition of her. Everything is so similar, but not the exact same: the slightest things have been changed. I notice acutely she holds herself in an unfamiliar way. Her earrings are no longer opal studs, but small silver rings.

What do I say to her? She seems at a loss for words as well, but I do not know if it is for the same reason as I am: complete and total shock at seeing her. My thoughts are plagued with uncertainty. Hesitantly, I begin.

“Wow... Bella. It’s been at least two years, God.” This is horrible. I sound incompetent and incomprehensible. “I didn’t think I would see you again. None of my calls would go though, they always said it was a wrong number…” I stutter, and shake my head again, because now I sound worse.

I was wrong: this isn’t similar at all. I feel we are communicating in different languages, and I am fluent in neither.

To my relief, she looks away from the horizon and up at me. Her eyes as the same as ever, and I am familiar with them because I’ve drawn them numerous times.. “Yeah, I… I wanted to see you… I only have a minute, but I was in the neighborhood and thought of you.”

Where do I go from here? I know what I want to say, but I am not sure I have the time. Declarations of love take more than a minute, and I have been and will be declaring my love for her for my entire life.

 

Five: many universes condensed into one moment

There are times when the beauty of the world is right there. The entire universe is exquisite. It’s up close and personal: the universe comes knocking at your door.

What do you do when this happens? What do you say to the universe when she comes knocking at your door? You say oh, hello, I didn’t see you there. And you invite her in.