What They Saw

She was a walking nervous habit.
Her knuckles begged her to stop popping them every five seconds.
The inside of her lip was constantly sore from incessant chewing.
The bounce of her knee made her thigh muscles ache for relief.
But there was no stopping it.
Nothing could keep her from clicking her pen.
Or from popping her neck.
Or from twisting her earrings.
Or from shaking out her bangs with her fingers.
Or from twisting sections of hair around her fingers.
They made her look fidgety, her nervous habits.
They didn't convey the nausea in her stomach.
Or the weight settled on her chest that made it hard to breathe.
She just seemed to have a lot of energy.
She seemed incapable of sitting still.
Which was another problem she absolutely faced, but it had nothing to do with the nerves.
They were two separate problems that seemed to manifest themselves in similar ways.
She could deal with excess energy.
She could laugh louder.
Talk more.
Hum.
But the nerves, the anxiety, that was a different story.
It was hard to control.
Hard to stop.
Hard to let out without looking crazy.
So she let them think she was overly energetic.
That she liked to fuss with her hair.
That the wide-eyed look on her face was normal and she was surprised by everything.
She didn't show them it was terror.
She didn't let on that her body was reacting without her consent.
Reacting to an emotion she didn't condone.
So she became the fidgety girl, the girl who laughed too loud and talked too much and played with her hair all the time.
As long as they didn't see the panic, that was okay with her.

Watching Her Walk

He stepped back into the shadows when he saw her across the grass.  He stood in solitude watching her walk.  She seemed so different than the girl he thought he knew.  Her eyes darted up from the ground for the briefest of seconds before snapping back down.  She seemed to be trying to shrink as she moved.  She wrung the raincoat in her hands nervously. 
That was it, she was nervous.  She wrapped the grey material up only to unravel it and fold it up again.  She switched if from her left arm to her right and back again.  He had never seen her this way, so fidgety and timid.  He sighed as she passed him still several yards away, turning to follow her with his eyes. 
Who was this girl?  What happened to her?  What happened to his girl?  He wasn't used to this side of her.  To seeing her look fragile, like an anxious baby deer.  He was accustomed to her rough edges, not her softness.  He was used to a sharp tongue and bright, questioning eyes, not silence and wide eyed fear.  Something in the way she moved intrigued him, so much so that he nearly called out to her.  But indecision took it's toll.  He hesitated one moment too long, wondering if she would smile at seeing him or weather her lips would turn down.  He wouldn't want that.  No, he wouldn't want that at all.  She fell out of his view but stayed at the forefront of his mind.  Why were the two girls so different?  Which one was authentic?  Where had her sass and sarcasm been just then?  And where was her doe-eyed innocence when he was around her?

Fragile Stitches

She spent years sewing herself back together.

 

All the words and all the lies, tearing out the fragile stitches.

 

She found stronger thread in creativity and confidence, but while the former was authentic, the later was entirely feigned.

 

No one would have know how frail the stitches were, except for her as they ripped.

 

But jealous gestures frayed the ropes and she began to fall apart again. 

3, 2, 1

I count down the minutes.
30. 29. 28.
Please be here.
27. 26. 25.
I'll get to see you, for just a moment.
24. 23. 22.
Will your eye catch mine?
21. 20. 19.
It never does, why should this be different?
18. 17. 16.
And yet I let myself hope.
15. 14. 13.
It's closer now and the ball of anxiety is my stomach is tight.
12. 11. 10.
The nerves threaten to take over.
9. 8. 7.
I'm in my place.
6. 5. 4.
I'm waiting. Waiting. Please come.
3. 2. 1.

A Representative of Prince Charming

Through a haze of tawny, sun-bleached hair, she watched him without his knowledge as she laughed.  He was watching her and her friend inconspicuously.  The gentle smile on his face suggested that the light-hearted, tinkling laugh bubbling from her mouth was the source of his quiet smile; her laugh pulling at the edge of his own.  With a frantic pounding in her chest, she looked away, afraid of being caught.  The room grew more and more quiet, the test began, but the look on his face stayed in her mind.

His hazel eyes crinkling at the corners, the arch of his eyebrow, the gentle smile that dared to stretch into something like a mischievous grin.  She was sure it was meant for her.  For her snorting, chuckling laugh.  For her happiness.  Despite her inclination to doubt, she let herself dream that her laughter elicited the same nervous tingle in his chest as his rumbling voice did in hers.  He was exactly what she wanted.  Exactly what she needed.  Exactly what she didn't expect to find.  His clean cut suits and sweaters along with his dazzling smile made her weak at the knee.  But what really held her captive, what really made her mind wander back to him every few minutes, was his sarcastic wit.
She had been told she wasn't gentle enough as a girl.  That her sarcasm and cynicism were intimidating.  But he didn't seem to notice.  For every action of hers, he had a remark and she had a witty reply.  The shot meaningless insults and wily retorts back and forth like bottle rockets.
For every stray though she let slip from her lips, he had a joke to which she was ready to respond.  He initiated most of their repertoire, but some days she felt brave enough to start it herself.  Their energy was, to her at least, magnetic.  When they were on a roll arguing or invalidating one another the rest of the world ceased to exist.  She never knew that friendly fire could rekindle that feeling that she had thus far attributed to inevitable heartbreak.

Through everything, the grief, the ache in her chest, the jaded mindset, she swore she wouldn't fall so easily.  One look would never change her future, she vowed.
What she didn't plan for though, fell into her lap without her consent.  Like-minded friendship, easy conversation, laughter, the unfamiliar feeling of acceptance, all descended on her in one large wave.  It all came down, drowning her in refreshing, blissful waves of exhilaration.  That was how things needed to be.  And with all the new, he snuck in quietly with a friendly challenge of intellect and a look.

Lord, that look.  That look tore her apart.  It was like he was trying to see through her and into her soul, into the inside of her mind.  Like he was slowly, gently taking her apart just to see how all the pieces fit back together.  It was a feeling that terrified her and intrigued her at the same time.  She was scared that he might actually see through her and find the betrayal, the heartache and the loss and the fear that created her cocktail of bitterness and sarcasm.  But at the same time, she was flattered he bothered to look at her at all.

For as "intimidating" as they said she was, he showed no signs of backing down from her challenge.  When their eyes locked, he never looked away first.  He met her embarrassed gaze with a steady stare.  Neither could be blamed as the habitual starter of their staring contests, for both of them started in equal parts.  It hardly seemed though that their interactions which were so glaringly obvious to her even registered in the minds of those around them.  Is it all imagined then?  She wondered quietly.

No little princess, keep fighting.  I think you've finally found prince charming, and if not him, then a representative of his court, coming to guide you home to his arms.

Dripping Drops

She'd never been on this side of it before.

The first time, she was the one dripping drops of sunshine in between the cracks of someone's blacked, broken soul.
He hadn't wanted it, but she didn't realize that.
All she knew was that her heart ached for how dark he had become.
All she wanted was to help.
But where she saw herself descending like an angel to rescue him, he saw a pesky mosquito and tried to swat her out of his smoggy sky.

She dodged the blows, misreading them as emotional defense, not legitimate dismissal.
But when he connected, it was a devastating blow.
She came crashing out of the sky and shattered like a porcelain doll on the solid rock of reality.
She tried so hard to pretend there weren't huge chunks of her missing, but she could only fake so long before she started emulating him.
She grew her own dark cloud.
It wasn't black and impenetrable like his, just a light grey that deepened quickly to charcoal through the trials of life.

She was tinting on black when he found her.
A different "he" than the one who broke her.
A "he" that was destined to fix a broken heart.
He swept in abruptly, distracting her long enough for the cloud to fade a few shades.
The look he gave her, that questioning, puzzled gaze that made her heart speed up and color rush to her cheeks, was unsettling.
She could tell that he could see the cracks.
One quick witted retort at a time, sarcastic comment by sarcastic comment, he began dripping drops of sunshine in between the cracks, like she had done for a doomed soul once before.

But she was different.
She didn't swat him out of her sky.
She craved ardently the shining liquid of hope that he seemed to be drenched in.
Slowly, as the drops he gave her began to add up, her cloud faded, until it dissipated entirely.
When that day came, she tested out her feet.
They were shaky after being on her knees for so long, but he slid his arm around her and held her up.
And when she was strong enough, she tested out her wings without a fear of falling, because he never left her side.