For When My Best Friend Doesn't Think She's Beautiful
Illustration by Hajera (@hhappytoastt).
So you tell me about the days you don’t think you’re beautiful and I start writing haikus to the cells and veins beneath your skin. I spill theories about how I think you were born with constellations on your scalp and little maps to secret paradises hidden upon your hands. I make plans to grow almond trees at every corner of the world so that every time you cross a street you’ll think of the beauty in the shape of your eyes.
I make a hobby out of capturing the moments when you laugh so hard you hold your stomach, then look towards the sun and are so radiant you start to eclipse it. I start recreating the Mona Lisa and make her Korean-American. She’ll be half between worlds and embody a sort of harmony. Half her land, rice fields and ever-growing cities, electric with smart cars and obscure street art. Half her land, luscious farms of Illinois, so green you swear that God repaints them every day, using the holiest shades of His palette. Then to finish this time around I'll give her a smile which looks like coming home the way yours does.
Or maybe it’s time I take up history since I’ve never been much of an artist. I’ll read the textbooks we never really paid attention to just to prove your existence is the collision of 2 worlds with trees whose very roots stem from chaos. Yet still, you prove even doves can be born of madness. I tell you to start looking at the stars because I’ve climbed to the top of the earth just to stretch a hand out to space and reshape it in your honor. I’ve held the stars in my hands and noticed your eyes still twinkle brighter. I’ve made blueprints and diagrams of how I’ll make constellations that look like the curve of your face. I’ve etched your name onto Venus and renamed her in your honor.
You tell me about the days you don’t think you’re beautiful and I untie the most gorgeous words I know from my tongue. I then print them out in dictionaries and redefine them as you. I record the sound of your laugh and brand it as a symphony. Mozart hears it from heaven and knows he never wrote anything nearly as beautiful as it. He knows no instrument will ever sound as sweet as your voice. Your voice; like the sound of seasons changing. The sound of snow falling to the ground and hot cocoa by a fire. Toes swaddled in fuzzy socks and marshmallows savored at the bottom of the cup. The sound of children splashing at the pool and fingers sticky with ice cream melting. The blazing sun all day and cicadas singing hymns to the moon and the night. You’re the sound of the beauty in time passing.
You. My best friend. You tell me about all the days you don’t think you’re beautiful and I beg of you to see yourself through my eyes, but you can’t. You never understood the worlds within you which light you up like Christmas trees on the daily, or how your heart, so tender, is a pure act of rebellion. You’ll never notice how your voice at the end of a phone line is like peace to me or how you know how to turn my tears into rainbows.
You. Always there when my heart is breaking. Always there to remind me how to laugh. There when I’m too much for this world and am always something of a castaway in a crowd. Teaching me that out of place is the perfect place to call home. Teaching me that being who I am is everything I'm meant to be.
But you don’t see these things because we tend to make foes with our reflections. We see zits instead of constellations. We see extra weight and annoying pounds instead of noticing that our shape is something of beauty and for every moment just right. What have always been details of the most perfect work of art we name insecurities.
And my beautiful best friend. My sister. My soulmate. At 1 am you tell me about all the times you don’t feel like you’re beautiful. You lay out your insecurities before me like a table spread. My heart sinks and I wish you could see your beauty from my eyes, but you can’t. So I tell you to start looking at the beauty of the world as a reminder of yours. When in reality, the sky has always been your mirror and every inch of beauty on this earth has always been your very reflection. ◆
Madelyne is an 18-year-old poet based in Wisconsin, whose passions include writing about her culture, life as a young Latina, as well as love in all of its forms and stages. When she’s not writing, you can find her drinking copious amounts of coffee, binge-watching The Golden Girls, or trying to find the answers to life in fortune cookies. Contact Madelyne Rose through: @madelynerose on Instagram.