Hi.
Can I just say that you’re beautiful?
I can’t see you.
I can’t hear you.
I don’t know if you can sing like an angel or are as off key as a drunkard on Christmas.
I don’t know if you’re porcelain pale or have laugh lines and freckles on your cheeks.
This isn’t a pick-up line.
There’s no punchline cause there’s no joke.
Just me.
Ordinary, imperfect, me, telling you that you’re beautiful.
It needed to be said.
It needed to be said because I’m one thousand percent sure that you’ve never said it to yourself.
I’m one thousand percent sure that you’ve never looked in a mirror and loved every single little part of you.
I’m pretty sure that you’ve looked into a mirror and said ‘Heck yeah, I’m lookin’ fiiine today’
But fine is…well…fine.
It’s not beautiful.
And today means today.
Not every day.
So, hi.
I don’t know your name.
I don’t know where you’re from or where you’re going.
I don’t know the color of your skin or the pigment of your dreams or who you love with an infinity that burrows itself into the very tip of your bones.
Quite frankly, I don’t need to.
Some cultures have a tradition of naming people for their personality. I don’t know you, but I’m sure you’re a thousand scribbles of a pencil knotted in lovely uncoordinated whorls that paint themselves into a smile.
I don’t know those scribbles
So, for now, you are Beautiful.
Beautiful, and I don’t care whether you think that’s a cotton candy sweet cliche or not, Beautiful your name is every single piece of you that locks together with puzzle pieces that only fit you, Beautiful, you are highs and lows and tears and laughter, a soul that soaks up warmth like it’s sunlight and huddles away from the cold by blowing on sparks of imagination.
Beautiful is the name that spreads your heart out until it fills your chest, pushing against your breastbone until it feels like there’s an ache, right there, from pure joy.
Beauty is not perfect.
Perfect is cold, so very very cold.
Beautiful, you are not perfect.
That does not mean you are not Beautiful.
You are every single facet of your mind, body, and soul, mirroring off each other in endless harmony, sharp love and soft frustration, pushing billions of molecules aside every second with just a tap of your finger.
Aren’t you extraordinary?
Call yourself Beautiful, call yourself by your name, say it as softly as you need to, as loud as you can bear it, let it fill you, take you in, take every part of your beautiful self in. You don’t have to smile if you don’t need to, but let sink into your muscles and your blood, let it blink out of the tips of your fingers.
You don’t have to be pretty. You don’t have do be perfect. You just don’t have to.
Because beautiful is not trying.
Beautiful is just being you.

From the one who needed to hear it most,

Hey beautiful.