Fragments of Cassandra

You tell me I’m beautiful.
Not casually.
Not carelessly.

You say it with such certainty
that for a while
I mistook your conviction for truth.

You place the word in my hands
like something sacred.
Something fragile.
Something that belonged to me.

And God,
I wanted to believe you.
I want to believe you.

Because everyone wants to believe
they have been witnessed.
Not looked at.
Witnessed.
There is a difference.

One is a glance.
The other is a home.

One says,
“I see your face.”

The other says,
“I see the person hiding behind it.”

And for a while,
I thought that was what you saw.
Not beauty.
Me.

You call me your stars
And for a while,
I believed I occupied
some singular place in your sky.

But now I see constellations of names.
And I find myself wondering
if your stars all look the same.

If they all burn
with the same borrowed light.

If they all hear
the same wonder in your voice.

If they all walk away believing
they were the one
you were pointing toward.

But then I started listening.
Really listening.
And I realized your admiration
falls from you like rain.

Soft.
Generous.
Endless.

You tell me I’m stunning.
You tell her she’s stunning.

You tell me I’m beautiful.
You tell her she’s beautiful.

And suddenly I am no longer holding a compliment.
I am holding a question.

If the moon is beautiful,
and the ocean is beautiful,
and every passing stranger
is beautiful,

then why should I believe 
I’m the only one you see?

What is it about me
that makes me believe
those words belong to me?

Maybe that sounds arrogant.
Maybe beauty was never meant
to be possessed.
But I would be lying
if I said it didn’t unravel something inside me.

Because I do not ache
to be beautiful.
I ache to be irreplaceable.

To be remembered.
To leave fingerprints
on someone’s soul.
To exist in a way
that cannot be replicated
by another smile,
another laugh,
another pair of eyes.

And maybe that is the tragedy.
Not that you find beauty everywhere.
But that I am beginning to wonder
whether beauty was all you ever found in me.

Because beauty is easy.
Beauty is everywhere.
Sunsets are beautiful.
Wildflowers are beautiful.

People stop for a moment,
admire them,
and keep walking.

I never wanted to be admired.
I wanted to be known.

And now every compliment
arrives carrying its own ghost.

Every beautiful.
Every gorgeous.
Every stunning.

Followed closely by the same haunting thought:

Would these words survive
if I were not beautiful?
Would they survive age?
Distance?
Grief?

Would they survive
the parts of me
that are difficult to love?
Or are they merely flowers
left at the entrance
while no one ever enters the garden?

You still tell me I’m beautiful.
And I still haven’t decided
whether that comforts me

or breaks my heart.

Because part of me believes
you see something
that is one of a kind.

And part of me fears
you simply see beauty
the way sunlight sees windows.

Touching everything.
Choosing nothing.
And some nights,
when the world is quiet enough
for my insecurities to speak;

I wonder if the thing I am mourning
is not your words,
but the version of myself
who believed they were meant
only for me.

I wonder if everyone is extraordinary,
then nobody is.

And if nobody is,
neither am I. 

And if your words were never mine to keep,
what am I supposed to do
with the parts of me
that grew around them?


Be’ahava,
The Mourning Bird