I find you beautiful, and I know you disagree, but I have reasons.

You're beautiful when you're thinking-- dark brown hair falling over and through and around the hand that a tired head is propped upon. It is impossible to capture the way the light falls on your hair, to capture the waterfall of chocolates (which reminds me of those big expensive boxes that hold every possible shade and type of the dessert) that winds its colour through the strands that blend into you. Your eyes are the same shade as a hershey bar, except three degrees darker, with a touch of shine. As you think, your eyes are narrowed slightly, intent, focused on something on your mind-- intense, like a lens, honing to its focal point, reaching the place where everything becomes clear. There's that clarity to you, somehow, an untouchableness to the girl that you deny you are.

I think that maybe you've mixed the equation up a little bit.

You're off-- you've missed the focal point-- you can't truly see yourself. But I can. Maybe it's my obsession with math, maybe it's my need to get things right, or maybe it's just you. Maybe you fit me, and maybe I can see you because I'm looking through the perfect lens. And maybe, just maybe, other people don't have the right lens (just like you). Maybe that's what's messing things up. Could you believe that? I can. I believe that you're our definition of [almost] perfect, a person with things they're scared of, a past and a present and a future. I believe you're human, I believe that life is hard and nothing's really perfect. But I also believe that that's why we have focal points, specific ones for specific lenses, because we all need someone to see us as we are and see everything, we need someone who'll see all of it and still declare us perfect. Perfectly matching.

Because, in the end, aren't we all puzzle pieces?

You're beautiful when you're mad at me, when you yell and run away and when you try to pretend like everything's fine. The moments when you're most vulnerable are the scariest, but at the same time it's when you're at your best-- you're the most yourself. I've been slowly memorizing your body language; the way you tilt your head when you're confused, when you want more information- the way you lean away when you're nervous, unsure- the way you lean in when you're most confident, or most in need of approval. There's the way your eyes talk; the way they widen a little bit when you know I'm right and you wish I wasn't, or when you know you shouldn't be doing something- the way they narrow when you're angry, when you're thinking, when you're pretending. I've memorized the way you walk, the way you duck your head under your hand when you're ashamed or scared or trying to forget something, the way you run your hands through your hair when you're really nervous. There's one thing I can't seem to figure out, though. There's no honest confidence in your language.

But you're beautiful. Didn't you know that?

Please... know that.