💛 Some fact, some fiction, mostly feels.

She is tall. She’s tall, but not unbelievably tall. Not tall enough to need to shop at different stores but tall enough that she just sticks out in a crowd. Mostly just tall enough that people’s eyes involuntarily linger longer than intended. Just long enough for her to notice. She always notices, because she’s always been tall.

She’s tall enough that she's often asked if she plays sports. She's never played a sport before but she likes knowing that she probably could. Or at least knowing that others think that she probably could. She liked leaving these things to people's imagination because that’s where she was the most full of possibility.

She’d been living in New York for 23 years. In that time she’d made it a point to visit every corner of the country for several months – sometimes up to 6 months. She’d dabbled in Miami, LA, and even Seattle. But she never stayed. She stayed long enough that others referred to these places as her home, but never long enough for her to feel at home. She’d spent time in other places too like Taipei, Berlin, Bangkok, Lisbon, Cairo. Usually on a whim, usually based on a quick exchange where someone would slip in conversation “You would absolutely love this place. I could really see you living there”. But she never stayed, she never absolutely loved it, and she could never see herself the same way others did. You’ve lived everywhere they would say. You could live anywhere others would echo. She liked knowing that in their minds her world stretched further and wider than she ever thought possible.

She worked as a bartender slash barista slash event host at one of those cafes that also described itself as many things. We’re a coffee-shop-printing-house-natural-wine-bar-collective. You’d think it would be insufferable, but everyone who went to the collective knew it was less of an identity crisis and more of a survival tactic.

Today she was wearing jeans that were borderline bell bottoms and a plain white tank top. She had on a chartreuse and navy printed scarf that she’d tied around her neck. She’d bought it last week after one of the patrons of the collective told her she had a really striking neck.

She comes home and strips off the day. Starting with her long jeans and then her plain white tank top. She unties the scarf around neck and looks at her near naked self in the mirror. She’s never quite sure what she’s supposed to see. She blinks a few times hoping that she’ll magically come into focus. But she doesn’t see anything. She slides the pads of her fingers up her supposedly striking neck. She can feel it under her fingertips but no matter how hard she tries to blink herself into view she quite literally can’t see anything when she looks in the mirror.

In the absence of other people’s imagination she’s not sure if she exists.