She Is (Flash Fiction)

It baffles him how great she is with words because he is not. He is awkward but still she takes the time to read the odd novella that is his hidden personality. She reads every word vividly and in technicolor, in sepia, and in black and white and the canvas she paints of him in her mind is so flawless that he doubts he could ever live up to such perfection. But she assures him that each stroke is no lie and each shade she adds, layer by layer, is indeed what she sees in him despite the fact that he himself does not.

She is solicitous and kind, responding gently to any and all the cold words he snaps at her. She is frustratingly understanding and he often feels naked, laid bare, by how much he knows she can see and comprehend but merely opts not to say aloud lest she frighten him away. So she smiles, nods, and holds his shaking hands through anguish, rage, and fear, nursing him with sheer compassion until he feels that spark of something: that spark that lets him know it's alright and that it's okay for him to be who is.

She loves herself, not vainly but with genuine innocence. He's certain that each day she looks in the mirror and can honestly smile at the reflection that stares back. She is neither intimated by others nor herself. He wishes he could love himself—appreciate and gladly acknowledge his own existence— the way she does, but she assures him that she shall love him until he learns to love himself and long, long after that too.

She is self-sufficient and a part of him likes that about her as much as he doesn't. He marvels at the way she can stand proudly on her own two feet, but each time he does the dark abyss in his mind reminds him that if she can stand alone then in actuality she has no real need for him. In fact perhaps it's the other way around. He does not voice this inkling fear but, as previously stated, she can read him so very well. So she tells him that she probably doesn't need him, at least not in the sense he believes a 'need' is comprised of. She wants him because he is beautiful, or so she says, and strong beyond his own knowledge. She says that he has fallen enough times that no one would frown upon him if he just decided to stay down, but—she continues—"you don't and that makes me admire and adore you all the more."

She says she needs his strength in a sense of which she has never known. She knows she cannot ever fully understand his pain, but she can be there for him and guide him through it. She says he has experienced hardships in which she has never known nor ever hopes to, but she knows tribulations are inevitable and one day she too shall stand on a severed level and wonder and 'mourn.' She tells him that he teaches her each day he remains by her side and one day she shall have to use those harsh lessons and that she knows it'll hurt. She then proceeds to tell him that she knows it'll ache a lot less because she'll have his love on her side and with his love and his existence, she is strong. He's helping now and he will in the future just as she hopes she is doing and will continue to do so for him.

She is an enigma in his life and he honestly doubts that he will ever truly come to understand. But he knows that it's alright. That the beauty in a mystery is that there is always a little something left unknown.