And he: (and this was almost unbearable) he saw me see him, and I saw him see me.
(Affliction, Marie Howe)
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
If her eyes glow when you smile, she can feel the pain in your eyes.
It's been years since she's done such a thing — read a person for who they are, what they are, how they see themselves, but her mind follows it like muscle memory. Translating every word and paragraph into a language she can understand, something foreign. Taking you apart with each second, knowing you better than anyone has. Her eyes can see like no one else's. Her eyes can see like yours.
If you'd ask to kiss her, she'd say no, because she knows your mouth is stained. She knows where you've been. She knows you'd defile her.
The auras of human creation haunt her brain like a ghost would in an old house, echoing through her soul and grabbing onto her lifelines. Nothing says I know like a woman who can read your mind. Nothing says I understand like a woman who feels your emotions with you, exactly how they present themselves to you.
No one says I've got you like her.
So, you're alone, frightened, left by your lonesome in an apartment in the middle of a big city. So, you've got no friends. Your last one abandoned you. You have nightmares frequently, always, and no one to put your pieces back together once you've been resurrected. But there's this girl next door. She's beautiful, like a lamb who's wool is just about ready to be sheared. And she looks at you like you're not the villain you know yourself to be — she looks at you like this is a sitcom and you're the handsome neighbor across the hall. But when she tells you what she knows, it burns, it stings, but somehow it cauterizes every wound you've ever been given —
