On Beauty

 What she wanted was this: to add beauty. 

    What that meant was confusing. 

    Beauty in print and practice was wise and witty, without obnoxious overtones. Clever, though not obviously so. Beautiful in essence and form, while both hinted at sultry. Old enough, but not to look it. Gentle, with gravity. Sarcastic, with levity.

    Exhausting, she thought. 

    Why? she wondered.

    Did anyone care enough about all this to form it?

    Oh, she had tried. Trying that came from peeking out from behind corners and wanting to avoid the bitter. In her first moments, she had thought that beauty was something else entirely. Print and practice gave her the recipe, and try as she might, the cake fell, was too dense, not light enough, not sweet enough. All of it lacked the new thing, the clever bit that made all attempts seem like oil in cracks, the authenticity that was yet another performance.

    She didn't care to perform.

    She only wanted words and beautiful things.

    Words to matter, that mattered, and were matter. 

    Beautiful, useful things for herself, for others, to make the world beautiful, or change it back. She could envision it all in her mind, and sometimes it made its way back into the world—the pen, the paper, the swaths of fabric, the patience, the grace, the cup of tea, the not-so-sweet and simple cake, the breath.

    Just by being, she was beauty.

    Someone would tell her soon. Surely.

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