beautiful
walking in shadows; wandering through death
I looked forward and saw a girl crawling on her grotesque skeleton hands and blackened knees towards me. Occasionally she stopped, raising her hands to brush the tangled waves of hair away from her face. I saw her tear-stained face, so small that her sunken cheeks almost made it look like her face would implode any moment. Her wrists were inked with spiraling lines and butterflies; almost as if she was trying to distract herself from how horribly skinny her wrists are - how they look like skin pulled taut over bones. She crawled closer and I saw why she was struggling - tied to her hands and feet were weights of Pride, Regret, Pain, Loss...
Finally she reached me and I gasped at how much she looked like me. She had the same eyes but sadder, the same cheeks but paler, the same lips but hers were dry. I held my hand out to her and so did she. Our fingertips touched but it felt too cold to be a human's fingers - and that's when I realised I had been looking into a mirror. The glass shattered and silver shards rained over me; and I lay there face down with tears pouring out of my large eyes that look out of place on my small face my cheekbones jabbing at my forearms pressed to my face my sharp elbows and knees on the ground leaving bruises on my skin the ink on my wrists seeping, fading, cracking
But then I heard a voice, calling a name - my name perhaps? I couldn't remember my name, if had one. The voice came closer, never going above that initial volume. I felt arms gently pulling me out of the hole that was slowly forming as the floor beneath me crumbled. You untied the weights, wiped away my tears, rubbed off the ink and kissed my wrists, then my cheeks and forehead. I tried to push you away but you held me tight and you said didn't want to let go.
I almost cried again when you told me you think I'm beautiful.