I knew a girl once, I knew her inside and out. I could count her flaws by the scars on her knees and I could name her victories with a smile. I saw her when she was flying, but also when she was falling and she has told me things that only the depths of her mind knew. She was alone a lot but never lonely. I don’t remember a time she was ever bored because her mind would run faster than any river I had ever seen and her thoughts could paint masterpieces in the air that belonged in art galleries. I was one of the only ones to ever see them. She might have talked a little too fast or said a little too much but I loved her.
Her hands were gentle but when she found something to hold onto her arms would have the force of 1000 men.
She tried never to break anyone.
Except herself.
I remember her finding tiny worlds at the bottoms of coffee cups, the remains of what others had left behind. Within metaphors she could tell her entire life but you never really knew her unless you took the time to ask. She would tell you everything; she would tell you nothing. She had a lot of faults but she kept them hidden under her pillow in hopes no one would ever think to check there.
She was beautiful really, but she knew it so that kind of took away from the allure. She loved and loved and loved. That was her best and worst quality. An incurable disease plagued her, and she used to tell me it was just her mind, just her past living within her skin. I knew better, I had always seen the warning signs. She always had to know the end of something and when she got to know someone she would know them completely, absolutely. Better than the back of her hand.
She was my best friend.
It was the sadness that got her. It consumed her mind like a sea. She was no stranger to drowning and even though she was a terrific swimmer there were a couple times that I truly thought she would never resurface again. There was once that she stood on a bridge, maybe she was daring the water to try to take her from up so high. She said it called her, and she almost answered. Strength is not always measured in numbers on weights, sometimes it is measured in how many people one holds up in their life, and how many times one wants to give up yet keeps going. War zones exist overseas but they also tend to exist in fragile minds. Sometimes she would forget the feeling of her own skin, and she would hurt to remember that she was still real. Numbness was the enemy. Surrounding her were people with dead eyes, and that wears on a human.
She wanted to find a way to fly but simply found better ways to fall.
People thought she was happy.
That was the sad part.

I knew a girl once.

And I was the only one who really knew her.