Attention

The first time I saw you, I flinched.

We stood amongst a sea of bickering bodies at an early morning bus stop during rush hour. The sun crept up from the corners of the sky as I counted the number of birds perched on the power lines. Then someone tapped my right shoulder.

I remember immediately lowering my chin to face the ground, squeezing my eyes shut, and swallowing the fear as my body went cold. Oh God, here it goes. I braced myself.
My shoulder pulsated where that index finger tapped me.

It was you.

"Hey, dropped your pen," while holding the pen out to me, you gestured to the bottom of my bag, "There's a hole in your backpack."

I looked up at you and we briefly locked eyes before I looked away. Why are you smiling? It must be a trick.

"Do you want it back or not?" My heart wouldn't stop pounding, so I ignored you and went back to looking at the ground. "Alright, it's mine now." You grinned, and the pen disappeared into your pocket.

It wasn't unusual for people to play with me. That probably wasn't even my pen. I was used to it. Girls pretending to be my friend for a day by asking me questions I wouldn't answer in high pitched voices to make their friends giggle. Boys asking me for my number as a joke and telling their unsuspecting friend that I "liked" them. They always said, "Hell no, that's a man!" "Is that a male or female?" "She looks like a rat" while dying of laughter like it was the most hilarious thing in the world.

As a girl, that's how we learn we're ugly. When our interactions with others are seldomly wholesome. When they use our ugliness as a source of entertainment. When the only people who say we are beautiful are our parents. When the line between a compliment and a prank becomes so blurred that we can't trust anyone that smiles in our face.

So on that day I know you noticed my personality is a brick wall. My nose is big, my skin is cratered, my hair is kinky, and I'm flat on both sides. Why did you step back to let me on the bus when we were the last ones to get on?

I was so confused. What is this? I was frozen, looking at the ground, waiting for you to get on. Yet, you still stood there patiently. After six seconds of eternity, I reluctantly went ahead of you alarmed expecting to have my hair pulled, or to be accidentally shoved into

But nothing happened.

I sat down in the first available seat right behind the bus driver because it always felt safer. I could just feel the warmth of your smile on my flushed cheeks when you walked to the back on the bus.

You did it again that Friday, the following Monday and Tuesday, until it became everyday we saw each other. Without fail, you always were a gentleman and let me go first. I never mustered up the courage to say thank you. For it would mean I would have to speak. And speaking from this voice was not allowed.

The world taught me that.

Falling over my own words trying to speak to you would have been too much to bear. If other people held their breath when I got stuck on the letter "T", I just knew you would too. However, I opted to show appreciation in other ways.

Every time you stepped back, I wrote a letter in my head. Every time you mentioned a song or music artist in conversation with someone else, I listened to them on repeat. When you spoke your mother tongue on the phone with whomever, I learned your language. I always envisioned that you spoke to me, and whatever you told me, I recited it to myself in my sleep as an affirmation. Your essence lived in my imagination for days on end. You were the first person that ever made me feel a pinch of what it is to be beautiful, and your fingerprint is on everything I've become.

But the day you stopped is the day I died.

She was beautiful and everybody loved her. You both fit so perfectly, a missing piece. From then on I was invisible again. So I stopped showering, tore my walls down in my room and didn't eat, but yet, I still threw up. When I saw you look at her differently from me, my intestines burst out from my stomach onto the ground at that same bus stop and wrapped around your ankles.

They wouldn't let go.

You continued to drag me as you strolled forward onto the bus holding her hand. The gravel burned the skin off my face. Her laughter pierced through the air deafening my ears. All I heard were muffled voices. That laugh I would never experience. Your touch I would never feel. Your children I would never bear. The adoration you had for her melted me into the earth. And I knew I would never see you again.

Alone as always, I look down at my reflection in this tub of hot water. And staring back at me is the delusional state I've boiled myself in - the humiliation is palpable. Why would a man so beautiful and charismatic want the ugly duckling when he could have his swan?

How will I save myself from burning to death when all my bones have melted? I won't. Instead I will sink my body into this bathwater and take a deep breath.