𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐚 𝐆𝐢𝐫𝐥 ✓

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐞 - 𝐥𝐞 𝐝é𝐣𝐞𝐮𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐮𝐫 𝐥'𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐞

Odessa Greene was incapable of feeling vulnerable. She had her flaws and her insecurities, but she wasn't afraid to voice them. She was undeniably comfortable with her imperfections.

She loved the way her ears stuck out a little farther than most people. She liked her downturned eyes and the dark circles that usually accompanied them. She liked the shape of her chin and the way it altered her jawline. She liked the dip in her hips and how they moved with her. She liked the deep dimple in her left cheek that was present even when she wasn't smiling.

In truth, she could go down a list from head to toe of all the things she loved about herself, but she didn't want to seem too cocky.

But if there was one thing she wished she could change about herself, it would be her eyes. Not the color or the shape or their placement on her face. It was her sight that was the issue. She wore contacts for the most part, which was why few people knew the extent of her bad eyesight. If not for said contacts, she'd have to wear glasses thicker than a Webster's and Miriam.

And even then, she wasn't insecure about them. She just wished she could see out of her own eyes and not a lense, be that polycarbonate or silicone hydrogel.

Though it was hard to see with eyes like hers, Odessa liked to look at things, closely and in-depth; to the point where she had them memorized. She could tell you the exact amount of lines on her hands, as she could spend hours looking and counting and feeling them.

And when she went to a museum for the first time, that was the beginning of her deepest fixation.

Her mother had taken her to the MET when she was six. That day she waddled up to the painting of Julie Le Brun looking in a mirror. She watched it for a few unblinking minutes and it watched back. She felt it was going to say something and though the art never spoke to her ears, it spoke to her mind.

After staring at the painting for what felt like years, she made her mother buy her an overpriced sketchbook and pencil from the gift shop and set to work filling its pages the moment they got into the car back home.

Her images were far from Van Gough, but they were hers and because they were hers she liked them.

She began a deep telltale infatuation with art and all it gave her. And something was satisfied deeply within her when she realized she could bring together her two loves: art and herself.

And as she sat on a pedestal, bare but for her hands and the thin alabaster sheet that covered her lap, she couldn't feel any more in love.

She sat still in the center of the room. The sea of easels, canvases, and faces did not scare her. She embraced them. There were familiar faces, ones who had seen and sketched the curvature of her form before. Others were flushed ruddy from the sight of her, exposed to them. Odessa tried not to giggle every time those particular people looked up at her and quickly looked back down at their depictions of her.