“your tears dont work on me”

there are certain things a young woman is not supposed to admit

one of them is that attention feels good

not all attention

not the ugly kind

not the hand lingering too long

the eyes that inventory instead of seeing

but there is a sweetness in being noticed

a strange narcotic pleasure in walking through a room and feeling the room rearrange itself around you

i hated it

i welcomed it

i hated how much i welcomed it

forgive me

forgive me for enjoying what i was taught to distrust

forgive me for understanding, even young, that beauty is a temporary currency and spending it anyway

a girl learns very early that she is being watched

then she learns that one day she will not be watched in the same way

nobody tells her exactly when this happens

they simply hand her a clock and call it a mirror

sometimes i think my real fear is not growing old

it is becoming invisible

i look at photographs of myself and feel grief in advance

imagine mourning a thing before it is gone

imagine standing in a garden and weeping for flowers that have not yet died

i know it is foolish

i know there is more to a woman than the face she carries through the world

yet knowledge has never been much protection against fear

i think that is why his words startled me so completely

“your tears don't work on me”

the sentence landed with the force of a revelation

not because i had been trying to manipulate him

not because i thought tears were a weapon

but because i had secretly believed that sorrow itself possessed a kind of authority

that if another person saw enough of your pain, they would eventually be moved by it

what arrogance

what innocence

to discover that someone could watch you cry and remain untouched felt like discovering a law of physics i had somehow missed

water falls

fire burns

some men look at grief and feel nothing at all

i should not say men

that is unfair

but i have known enough of them to understand the temptation

how often they adore what they cannot keep

how often they confuse possession with devotion

how often they mistake novelty for love

and yet

and yet

some stubborn part of me remains unconvinced by my own cynicism

perhaps because i still want what i have always wanted

not worship

not obsession

not even desire

only permanence

someone who looks at me when i am twenty and looks at me when i am seventy and somehow understands that these are the same woman

someone who stays

someone who sees the person surviving beneath the succession of faces

maybe that person exists

maybe he does not

most days i suspect he does not

most days i think love is a beautiful migratory thing

crossing seasons

crossing continents

never staying long enough to build a home

but every so often

usually in the quiet

i feel a small rebellion rise inside me

a refusal

a refusal to believe that every tenderness is temporary

a refusal to believe that every promise decays

a refusal to believe that i am only as valuable as the youth currently visible in my skin

and when that feeling comes

i forgive myself a little

for the vanity

for the fear

for the tears

for wanting to be loved forever

for wanting impossible things

after all

nearly everything beautiful begins that way