Finding things I wrote in high school and college always
feels like a sort of time-travel. I will stumble upon something written by a
younger, often-jaded and angsty version of myself and suddenly I'm there. I'm
back in it. That heartache. That frustration. That confusion. That chaos. And
it hurts. It still hurts.
But I rediscovered something beautiful this morning -
something I had started in high school but finished years later, after getting
engaged to my now-husband. I read through the poem again for the first time in
three years. There was an aching in my heart, a tugging in my chest that made
me want to run back to 2007 and give younger me a hug. But by the last line, I
got it. I hope you can take from it what I did. We are stronger than our pain.
We are more than the scars on our heart. We deserve love. Real love.
What She Sees
She looks at the mirror and sees what nobody else can.
She sees her smile.
The smile passed down from her lovely mother.
But she sees past its simplicity.
She sees the times she smiled to get out of trouble.
Out of lies.
Out of the contradiction that she didn’t want to admit.
She sees the blue eyes she inherited from her father
Surrounded by a forest of long black lashes.
She looks deep into her own eyes in the mirror and sees the
tears.
They hide so perfectly behind her pride.
Invisible tears.
A product of the pain she never admits
And the secrets she always keeps.
She sees her nose
Decorated with an assortment of freckles.
She remembers the smell of his cologne
A smell that was slowly replaced with cigarette smoke on his
clothes.
She remembers the hopeless feeling of losing him
To a demon without a name.
Years have passed.
The woman looks into the mirror once more.
She sees her smile
Now sincere and beautiful.
Her mother’s smile.
She sees her blue eyes
Her father’s indeed.
Behind which lie memories of miracles, tragedies, and
foreign lands.
The invisible tears are gone
Replaced by tangible tears. She lets them fall.
She sees her nose.
The freckles have faded.
She can no longer remember the smell of his cologne.
She doesn’t mind.
And now she sees her collarbone
Something she has never cursed
For it has always been her most delicate and feminine
feature.
She sees the wounded heart underneath
Mending slowly through the love of a man she never expected.
She sees her hands
Full of imperfections and bitten fingernails
Upon which he placed a ring.
His most beautiful reminder that he will never forsake her.
She is blessed.
