8.24

As flowers go, she certainly wasn't. I mean, I don't intend on being rude, but the fantastic quality of a star in the early evening, or the slight biting awareness of the first drops of rainfall sitting pert on cold skin--these were not her qualities. She wasn't mundane, ugly, offending, but there was something nearly unlikeable, simplistic, unrefined, about her face, her voice, her attitude. Not toxic, but drug-like, ephemeral, always leaving you wanting something more, more, more, (this set of three a coincidence, having nothing to do with her favorite number, more a simple trick of repetition to increase urgency, not an homage to her obsession with triplets. There are threes all through this, and I--well, to be honest, I hadn't seen them until now. Maybe she's still here though I don't want her to be). She wasn't the slick feeling of mud between your toes, but she wasn't the slick feeling of dropping you get in your heart when a beautiful girl's skirt brushes your bare hand as you sit, studiously ignoring her so she won't know you're staring.
I'll tell you what she was: she was a well-made bed with colorful sheets, is what she was. She was the door of a house that won't sit on its hinges. She was something new and interesting in an old box, always worth talking about but with less and less to say. I've always said, and I'll keep on saying it: it's rare to meet a person who's beautiful in a new way, a way unique to you, to whom you might be only the third or fourth person to have that opportunity to say, and really mean: you're the most perfect sight I've ever had. You're not a sunset or a mountain range or a field of lilies. You're something far less to most and far more to me: you're the smell of an old friend's house or an open book right where you left it or the quiet sound of your loved one breathing. You're a dependable, everyday lovely, and I want to make you last.