Her - Vignette for English

She is staring; her eyes are opened widely, as if she is as terrified as a free-faller without a parachute. Her bottom lip trembles, her hands and arms shake. She is scared. Scared like a baby bird spreading it’s wings for the first time. Scared like a preschooler on the first day. Scared like a new mother while her newborn baby is crying. Her eyes catch my gaze and I am caught there, paralyzed by the greens and gold’s swirling around her pupils. She goes to speak, but no words come out. She opens and closes her mouth like a fish in the water. But oh, she is a beautiful fish. I wrap my hands around hers, as if her hands were a caterpillar, and mine were the cocoon. I hold her there, and pull her closer to me. I whisper to her, telling her not to be afraid. But my voice comes out shaky too, and it disappears quickly, as if it were a train’s whistle, lost in the night. Was I scared? Yes, I was scared too. I was terrified, like horror-movie goers when the lights go out. I was scared from the expectations, and ideas already placed in my mind. You could tell me it was fake, but my heart would still race, as if it were running it’s own personal marathon. But this? This was not fake. This was real. She was real, and I was real. She is sitting before me, placed there like she was always meant to stay, and I am across from her, mirroring her opposite, like one of those funhouse mirrors in a cheap carnival. To her beauty, there is my ordinary. To her perfection, my flaws shine through. To her exquisiteness, there is my expected. We are opposites, like the day and the night. The moon and the sun. But you cannot have one without the other, and that is the way it should be.