of blind heroines and foolish heroes

ii. OCCULUS REPARO

one day in june,

my friend wrote me a list of things

i am good at.

she did not preface it with anything much,

only a simple

“here you go.”

the title of the document was

“your talents”,

and she had bullet pointed them in what seemed a very

systematic

and thoughtful way

and it reminded me of

hermione granger,

a woman caught between the pages of seven

books

that we had both

at some point

striven to emulate

 

on what i think is around about the same day

a year later,

it became very clear to me

that the only one in need

of such a list

was the same person

who had created it.

 

i found it curious

that a person could have such capacity to love

others

but not

herself.

 

and one day i caught her arm

and i looked at it

and she looked at me

looking at it

and then

she started

to cry.

and i am not sure what hurt more

whether it was the feeling of the tears soaking into

my shirt

or the thin, wavering lines of red

on her arms,

ones that she had arranged in what seemed a very

systematic

and thoughtful way

and the colour reminded me

of ron weasley,

who was a character i must admit

to disliking at first

but becoming fond of

eventually,

and one i know she

had always loved.

 

my friend is very pale and very slight,

and she is very beautiful

in a way that everyone but her seems to notice.

sometimes i look at her and i wonder at how someone so stiflingly

brillant

can have more faith in an ink and paper boy with a lightning bolt scar

than in herself.

but then,

i suppose,

these things have always been very strange to me.

my friend listed my talents

when i did not need them listed.

 

but i fooled myself into thinking

i did,

and she acted upon

what she saw.

i wonder now,

what i could and would

have done.

 

and i wonder if my friend

still hurts so much

that she feels she needs to cut

the feeling

out of herself.

 

and i will not ever write her a bullet-point list,

because it will be too long.

instead i have written her

this.

just over six hundred words of whispered nothings

and fervent wishes that they would make the wispy lines of red on her arms

go away

all of which i will never show her,

but she will find anyway.

 

and i will read her favourite books

forever

if i must.

i will not tease her for the way the pages of her copies are slightly

wrinkled

because she reads them in the bath.

i will remember that the characters’ middle names are james and jean and

bilius,

and i will not ever call harry potter

foolish,

or self-absorbed,

mostly because he is not

and also because

i see him in her every day.

 

i will love slytherins and i will love gryffindors

and heaven forbid i should leave out hufflepuffs or ignore

ravenclaws

i will watch every film at least

seven times

i will appreciate severus snape

and james potter

simultaneously,

and i will listen to every anecdote that she ever relates to me on the topic

even if i have heard it before.

if those seven books about a boy who lived

in a cupboard under the stairs

tell the only story that ever stays in my head

then i am glad that my friend picked a story

that is worthwhile.

 

and i hope that even ten years after i write this

she will still love the ink and paper boy with

the lightning bolt scar,

but she will love herself

just as much

.