Katie Miller is a sophomore at SCAD Atlanta and is working towards a B.F.A. in writing. She cherishes quiet places, handmade journals, and anything that’s good and lovely. With a passion for many of the arts, she has found her niche in writing and hopes to use her talents to inspire and promote positivity.
You
It’s you. You know, there’s something about you. Something good, I can just tell. It’s in your eyes mostly. I love them. They are beautiful, I mean really beautiful. I would know because they’re looking right at me, right now. You’re just sitting there across from the page and I beg you please don’t leave. Not until the end when it’s all over. A horrible but inevitable ending I dread. If you stop before then, I don’t know if I will have fallen completely in love with you.
You’re looking at me so intensely, so focused, so serious. You’re making me a little nervous. You always make me nervous. I don’t know how you do it. I like feeling like that though so don’t look away. You must know I like you a lot. No one else ever pays this much attention to me.
I wish you could tell me about my eyes. But sometimes I’m not sure if I even want to know. They must have sadness in them. Though sometimes I can see a figure in your mind, it’s really blurry like you’re trying to put something together. It morphs and changes continuously. Nothing about it is ever defined. Colors change and the shape is obscure, but there is never a face. I like to think it’s me, but it’s never completed. I love you for trying to see an abstract written version of me.
It’s a little unfortunate how temporary this is. I wish it were a longer time spent together. I feel dead when no one looks at me, and so alive when I’m running through your mind. That makes me love you. It’s the only way I can hear your voice. It’s so soothing when your thoughts speak silently so it’s just us who can hear, and it’s lonely when you’re not around. But then I can’t be selfish can I? You will always have other things to do. Responsibilities and people out there to tend to. I’m simply a pastime, but you will never know how much I cherish these moments with you. If I could have my way I’d never let you put me down and put me away, because waiting for our next meeting is pure agony. But you haven’t put me down yet and I think I’m in love with you.
I wish I could touch your face, at least once. Just to know what it’s like. I get to see and hear you, but even to just hold your hand would be an entirely new and wonderful experience. I can at least feel the weight of your eyes as they drag across each line. It’s funny to see how quickly they jump around and sometimes stop when you’re thinking. I find it charming.
But this story I’ve been placed in doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like a story at all. How awful it is to live and exist only when someone lets you. I keep hoping it will end differently each time but I’m always disappointed. It is at this point, the horrible end, when our time together is running out and I’m forced to sleep, that I want to go back to the beginning. It isn’t fair that I can’t have what I want. The words on these pages are so permanent. So eternal. And I relive the reality that I will never be free. I can never make my own choices because I had none to begin with. I can never be made entirely real. I fear I might die if I were to exist anywhere else besides this predictable world that has been created around me. And you, you might suffocate if you always stayed the same. Never growing or learning. I could never let that happen. Our worlds are separated by a fine line that keeps them from touching, and that is why you always have to put me down until next time.
But you like this story because you read it over and over. And you like that it never changes because that means I will never stop loving you, and that makes me hope that you love me too.
HONEYCOMB LITERARY 