Who Are You?

Girl

Is this my story? No.

Do I have the right to tell you this story? Probably not.

Am I going to tell you this story? Yes, yes I am. I'm going to tell you the story of how boy meets girl and how boy and girl fall in love with each other. And then I'll tell you how it was all a lie. I'll tell you it was a lie because you wouldn't believe the truth even if boy and girl told you themselves. You wouldn't want to.

She was a youthful age of 11 when she first met him and I remember the day she met him. She wore a light, mid length wide skirt that pinched in at her waist- covered in pink flowers spiralling the length of the fabric that cloaked her legs. Her hair was a riley, oak bundle of coils which travelled down to the two dimples at the cliff of her back which only her parents would have seen. Her fair, white face was splattered with the freckles, only distinguishable if you knew what to look for.

That's what everything was like with her. You would only see it it, if you knew what to look for. This girl was a closed book, with the ending written on the underside of the cover. She had no secrets and everything to hide.

"Baby, let me tie your hair up, the wind is going to swipe you away one day". Her mother had tied a bright blue band around this little girl's hair, high up on her head in an equally chaotic knot. Nonetheless, it kept her hair away from her face and only then could you see the light sand that coloured the iris of her eyes. They were a dull colour; her eyes, but the silhouettes of life behind them could have illuminated a thousand lives and resurrected a few hundred more. She was 11 years old and yet the life that I saw felt as if she had lived more than one life at once. There were experiences and thoughts and feelings that I knew, that she knew she had not survived.

She ran around and around and in straight lines, in circles and up and down. "Sit down, my love, the ground will trip you up one day". The freedom that flew between her fingers as she spread her palms up towards the sky and swept at the air as if to catch all that she could, this freedom was one that I hadn't seen again after this day. It was a sort of freedom that no-one had ever known because every body is restricted in a way. But for some reason, when this girl, saw this boy, she saw freedom and everything that freedom meant.

She was no longer restricted and she could choose which of those silhouettes behind her eyes that she could take the form of. 

She saw him from a distance at first. She saw the soft, blonde glow of his hair and told her mum she wanted white hair. The ringing laughter of her own, and her mothers surrounded the playground and vibrated through the chains that held the seats of the swings that carried the small children as they flew through the sky. "Honey, that's just the light, let's go closer and you'll see". 

I remember the fascination that smacked this girl in the face. It was a violent fascination. The boy had dark, tough hair. He had a tough face, and soft lips, but it was his hair that this girl was the most intrigued by. I think it might have been the certainty of his presence that shocked her, because from one end he could have looked like an angel underneath the street lamps, but how do you touch an angel? He was here, definitely. 

And from that certainty, she founded the idea that she was in love with this boy because he saw her. He saw her rusty sand coloured eyes, and only her. He didn't see all those other people that on occasion try to overshadow the dull look in her eyes, because he was certain- he saw her. 

So this was the day, when she was 11 years old, that she met this boy and this boy met her for the first time.