The Girl

There once was a girl. And she was made of flames and of coffee and of hot breath in cold air. She was never still and she was never the same thing twice. She was whole but she was empty and she was a strange sort of beautiful, in a way that meant you could never picture her face unless she was right in front of you.

She never stopped; she would tornado through life, throwing everything ordered into a whirlpool of confusion giving you that strange sense of freedom that comes with chaos.

Sometimes I wondered if she was ever there at all, if it was possible for someone like her to exist: A girl made of flames and of coffee and of hot breath in cold air.

Her eyes would burn like jars of captured starlight and her lips were always moving, not stopping even for a moment.

She dreamt of worlds that could never exist and of adventures too daring to achieve. She read books in languages she didn’t understand and she would make up stories from what the words sounded like. She would roll them off her tongue and taste them round her lips, trying to imagine she could speak anything and everything she wanted.

Her fingertips looked so tiny and fragile, as though they would snap off at any moment. But she could snatch and scrape with an unpredictable ferocity at anyone that took liberties. She would pick a spider up and tenderly place it outside but she would crush fingers beneath her scruffy combat boots without a second thought if people got too close.

Her skin was drowned in accidental paint splashes and she would find swirling pictures in them as she curled up in her chair. Her hair twisted and curled around her and would flutter protectively around her face in the slightest wind, her eyes nestled behind the tangles like golden pearls protected by kings.

She would pinch at the back of her hands sometimes and would never tell anyone why. And if someone were ask her what was on her mind she would merely smile her strange, mysterious smile and turn away.

She would scream out to the world at the very top of her lungs. She would scream until her throat bled and her tongue curled. She would scream all the things she thought the world deserved to hear and all the things she just wanted to tell it. She would scream until her lungs burst and her heart exploded.

But the world didn’t listen.

And she didn’t care.

In the dark she would run around in fields, jumping and dancing, throwing her hands into the air. Shouting into the wind and laughing until she cried. And then she would lie down in the soil with tears streaming down her face, and she couldn’t be sure if she was happy or sad. But it didn’t matter because she didn’t care.

She would stare up at the sky and point out to me imaginary constellations, naming them after dreams she couldn’t remember and lives she wished she’d had. She would whisper up to the man on the moon about anything that came to mind, and she didn’t care if the man on the moon wasn’t listening because a lot of things came to mind.

See, there once was a girl. And she was made of flames and of coffee and of hot breath in cold air. And she was the strangest person I ever met. And she was the perfect example of what life could be if you tried just a little bit. And all these tiny, insignificant words that I have tried to give you can’t even begin to imagine her because no one and nothing can compare or describe her.

No one could ever picture her once she was gone and no one could ever pass along who she was because there was no way to explain her. So I suppose you shall never know that girl I once knew who was made of flames and of coffee and of hot breath in cold air.