A girl who suffers from chronic nostalgia smiled at me today;
I think the cancer of loving the unlovable is eating away at her soul.
She looks so old, so young, so weary of the wonderful;
I-can-do-anything girl. But she can’t do this.

This impression of inability must have come slowly at first;
syrup on snow. Sweetly it expanded, cutting its own insidious path
in the soft contours of her mind, furtively filling in crevasses, sugar-coating
the crux, hiding the increasing decay.

Distracted, she let it grow unnoticed, deafened to the roaring silence.
Whispers began climbing out of stillness imperfect; Swelling Deficient;
Thundering IMCOMPLETE. A pinwheel of doubt and insecurity;
She became dizzy with the beautiful fractured truth of it.

I think it became her mantra. The words reverberated through
the hollows of her mind, striking her core. Transformed, she realized with ultimate
certainty that she had discovered the secret in the dark kaleidoscope of her eyes.
Smiling, she looked beyond and into me, imitating.