Pretty

A little something I wrote. A bit of fiction, based on nothing and about no one. Just a writing exercise. I hope you enjoy it.

"Is she pretty?" That's what they asked me about you. "Is she pretty?"

"Yes, she is pretty," I said, but it felt so wrong to me, too simple. You're a plain girl of a certain kind, with hair the color of brown hair, the kind of brown hair about which you would say, if someone asked you, "It's brown." Your skin is fair, almost pale, though easily flushed pink or red with exertion or emotion. No blemish distracts the eye from failing to notice your subliminal complexion. The smallness of your shoulders and neck, arms and legs hardly cast shadows across the paths of the many who walk by you unaware each day. Would you call your eyes hazel in color, brownish bluish greyish green, were anyone to ask? How can I tell them that your beauty is furtive, that you can only see it when you're not looking for it, that, upon inspection, you hardly register? "If you sit with her at the end of the day," I might say, "after more words and more laughs and more touches than you can count, and ask yourself when you have been happier, or try to remember the burdens you bore just yesterday, you will notice, quite unexpectedly, sitting beside you, a beauty like you've never seen, small and fair, brown hair falling without motive over hazel eyes. She is the kind of pretty that surprises you, so that one day, quite unexpectedly and irresistibly, you whisper both to yourself and also to her, 'My God, you're beautiful.'"

"Yes, she is pretty," I said. Can you imagine?

Hello, friends. How are you?

Love.