basset hound nightgown t.s

This is me trying

My hair was lush, clean and thick. When they spun it up into the perfect french twist, with ironically annoyingly front strands that were meant to look messy but really took three hours to perfect. Sliding the indigo dress over my hips and chest was like falling into a new skin, that got painted on with makeup brushes and tulle. It was a maxi dress, not skintight but not loose. The arms were long and went down to my middle finger. The dress had its own scarf/collar. A thin material that wrapped around in 1900's style. 

The dress very lightly shimmered under the lights, with sparkles almost too small to see. I looked stunning, and bashfully told myself so. I was a complete trainwreck. With an elusive yellow envelope in the nightstand by the cloudlike hotel bed taunting me. 

"My my, you look beautiful". Came the Italian accent of my stylist Pluto Faucet. His name wasn't one to laugh at, silly as it sounded, he was genius. It was a Versace look; I knew Taylor had opted for Schiaparelli. To announce an album that was a complete masterpiece. A masterpiece of songs she had birthed and grown in her mind for the past two years. 

My makeup was simple, a sunburnt orange red lipstick. Lots of blush, brown eyeshadow, white eyeliner. In a madness rush I was forced to take thousands of photos in the hotel lobby. When I stepped out of the grand hotel into the ever-glowing sun and onto the carpet covered concrete into a black car with tinted windows I knew whatever happened, I had to keep this fake skin on. This facade. 

The lineup of cars was tragic, even more tortured than the poet's department. On a night car trip in the last four months Taylor had looked over at me wistfully grinning like a mad fool and worshipped my depression with her placid words. "You're the most tortured of all the poets my Luce. That's a compliment coming from me. Noone writes like you. Noone feels like you. You see angels out of clouds, souls in trees. You're the magician who cast a spell on my moonlit slumber and made my dreams vivid fantasies in your literature". Taylor Alison Swift has a way of saying things. She makes you feel special. Seen. 

I felt seen. Now I feel see through. 

A diabolical and dismal storm is brewing in my stomach, but it's a storm with a beautiful navy sky, and a moon of so many shades of white and yellow I fear I'm the only one who noticed. It's an orchestra of thunder, rolling over the skies like God. Like a king. 

My baby will be a ruler, my baby will be the most feeling of them all. For the best or worst. 

When my burgundy pumps first meet the red carpet, my heart stops. I can almost feel the presence of the horses on my back dancing, galloping over my freckled skin. They are here, with me. Just as the small being in my stomach is. I'm not alone. No matter how lonely I feel. The hand of someone in a black and white suit with thick black sunglasses and a walkie talky on his shoulder that intwines with mine to help me onto the ground and out of the black vehicle feels like Jude's hand. In some strange way I think it is. 

He's here. Helping me to walk the line where thousands of bright flash-on cameras are already sparkling at me. Dozens of reporters screaming my name. MY NAME. And it doesn't sound as good as it does rolling out of the red lip, classic thing that I like's mouth. But It's my name, the name my mother gave me. The name my grandmother shared. The name my grandfather greets me with when I'm fortunate enough to see him. The name Jude called every day, when I'd steal his CD's and band shirts. 

Lucile Gray, the girl currently cat walking across a velvet carpet with anyone I've ever admired. With all the singers whose posters hung on my childhood walls. Whose songs got me through breakups. In the country I gained and lost everything. And looking around I understand what Taylor meant when she says I see a little bit of beauty in everything, that I feel a little more than anyone else. Because when my publicist tells me where to stand and smile. My smile is anything but fake. 

It's a wide, teethy grin that in a mirror would look the same as the smile when I was eleven, when I won the school singing competition. This feels the same. I'm still a little girl, with feelings conveyed into song. I'm still a little girl who gets her heart broken like glass. 

I can almost feel the pride radiating of myself, and when I turn my head to the right and see for the first time, the most beautiful creature I've ever seen and I smile, with tears in my eyes I can feel the pride coming out of her too. 

She smiles and waves, I smile and wave back. 

It's her lyrics that tickle my brain in that second, "And it's hard to be at a party when I feel like an empty wound, it's hard to be anywhere these days when all I want is you. You're a flashback, on a film reel, on the one screen, in my town. And I just wanted you to know."

THAT THIS IS ME TRYING. 

ATLEAST IM TRYING.