Incomplete

Isn't it funny how one word can make or break a day? One single word spoken by someone you don't even know can bring back all the self-hatred, all the loathing you've ever felt for yourself. It sticks to you like glitter residue, holding to your skin like a tattoo.

"Hurry up, cripple," a tall man holding a thick black briefcase muttered as he walked past me, his eyes lowered so as not to make eye contact. It always struck me as ironic that the people who went out of their way to degrade me tried to remain anonymous about it.

I rolled my eyes and continued to walk forwards, well aware that the train on this platform, the train that we would both be getting on, wasn't due for another ten minutes. The hand clenching my cane tightened in anger.

Cripple.

Not a word I liked, but not one that was unfamiliar to me. The very noticeable gap between just under my left knee and the floor always seemed to define me before I got a chance to define myself. Throughout school, I had always been 'that girl with one leg' in passing, never as Della. Never as a whole person. I was always seen as incomplete, a girl with something missing.

I let out a small sigh and manoeuvred myself into sitting down on a gaudy yellow bench, the bright colour juxtaposing the otherwise monochromatic station. I placed a single headphone in my ear and pressed shuffle on the iPod in my pocket, closing my eyes and blocking out the sunlight.

It had been a rough day at work. It seemed odd to me that I made my living in the fashion industry; I was the antithesis of all it represented, but a job was a job. I was lucky enough to be one of the few people who actually did something with their photography degree. I had been commissioned by a large fashion magazine to do a shoot for their Diversity issue, supposedly a celebration of all the things that make us different. When I arrived I had been greeted by 7 nearly identical blonde, tanned models with legs like skyscrapers and smiles that screamed of dental realignment. This was the extent of diversity that we had been given to photograph? No short women, no big women, no dark women? Certainly no women missing a leg.

The ground underneath me rumbled as the train came to rest in the station. I stood up.

I walked forwards and stepped onto the train, ignoring the sympathetic looks from people on the platform. There weren't many spare seats in the carriage, certainly not enough for me to sit on my own, my personal preference, so I sat down between two people, a woman in her mid-twenties with dyed hair the colour of a bruise, and a young man in jeans and a buttoned-up white shirt. The man looked at me as I sat. More specifically, he looked at how the stump of my leg where the knee ended and air began brushed against his perfectly pressed trousers. He shifted slightly to the left, breaking the contact between us. He didn't want to touch me.

"Amputation isn't contagious." I looked directly at him, already annoyed.

He gaped at me, his mouth opening and closing like a fish, his face flushing beetroot red.

"I didn't mean t-"

"Your leg isn't going to fall off just because it touches mine, you know?"

The entire train cabin was staring at us now, and the man glared at me and stood up, walking away from me. I let out a deep sigh and slunk back into my seat, feeling slightly better now some of my anger had been let out. I went to put my earbud in again when I heard a snort of laughter from my right. I turned around in surprise to see the woman next to me with a grin as wide as her face. She looked at me, blue eyes sparkling, and broke again into a fit of laughter, actually bending double with the force of it. Her shirt was covered in embroidered animals, and it was tucked into a black skirt that just covered a dreamcatcher thigh tattoo.

"I'm sorry," she muttered between giggles, literally wiping her eyes, "But his face was just priceless."

I couldn't help myself, I snorted out a laugh as well.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"You must get annoyed with people like that," she crossed one perfect leg over the other and tilted her head. I shrugged.

"Doesn't bother me anymore," I admitted, "Society is never going to see me as pretty, may as well get used to it."

Her eyebrows raised at my statement, and she said, almost without thinking, "I think you're beautiful."

Beautiful.

A word I liked, but not one I was too familiar with. Beautiful was for the models I photographed at work, for people like this girl in front of me, tall and slim.

I shook my head at her, already dismissing her sentence, then stopped myself. What exactly was beautiful?

Beautiful was for the way my hair looked in the sunlight, the way my deep skin, Indian skin, the skin I got from my mum, seemed to almost glow when it was wet. Beautiful was the dimples in the corner of my mouth when I smiled.

I looked up her, and she grinned, teeth straight. She was right.

Beautiful was for the way my left leg was crushed under a car when I was twelve, the way it ended in a dull point just under my knee.

"Beautiful." I repeated.

Isn't it funny how one word can make or break a day? One single word spoken by someone you don't even know can bring back all the love, all the joy you've ever felt for yourself. It holds to your skin like a tattoo. It sticks to you like glitter residue. It makes you smile again.