Summary: 
Excerpt of a poetry collection. A particularly personal one about my best friend.

I see you. Oh, I see you. I see the sullen eyes, the dark shadows brewing underneath. I see the hollow bones, shrunken skin, and unwashed hair. The grease that streaks from your scalp, the knots that twists and distorts you. That inner, cruel beast that wants you to look as insane as you claim yourself to be.

   I see you watching the world. Watching the girls, watching the boys, watching the people who know themselves to be the other, trapped inside the wrong body. There’s a brief light in your eyes when you watch them. They have something you do not, you think. Yet, you are unable to know exactly what it is. Do we all not live on the same Earth? Do we all not have a soul, a body?

   Ah, but that is too big a question to be answered. Too enormous for your tiny self. You believe yourself to be tiny…I know because you write so small. I see you now, writing on a tiny notepad you brought out from your tiny bag. The letters are so tiny I can barely see the ink. I know you like it that way. Poetic you would say, if I were to ask.

   I do not like asking.

                                         But I do like watching.

  I know your tricks. I know what you desire so desperately from the people surrounding you, though you still don’t know what it is. There’s a gleam to you, almost desperation. Though you would hate me if I said so. I often have to carefully tread the glass that you place around your feet…it can easily shatter. You do not like it when it shatters.

   Or maybe you do. I have begun thinking that you do.

   You see a slim girl, laughing with her friends. She is radiant. Her self glows. Her joy rising up the others. Why can’t I do that? you think. Except I know you can. Your laugh ignites the room. Ignites my happiness. You would mutter an inside joke in my ear, behind a secretive hand – because indeed were we secretive – and I would feel special. Loved. I know you did too, when I would share a laugh in your ear.

   Your face drops. The shadows become darker. You are overweight, though somehow you make yourself even smaller. Though your hair lights you up like a beacon lights the sea, a vibrant sky blue this time, you hide. You are not there, you are invisible.

    You made me feel invisible.

                                                     I hate that.

    I could walk over to you. You have not seen me, but I have seen you. All of you. I have seen that beautiful olive skin heal over jagged mutilations. I have seen that soft hair become an untamed beast. I have smelt that perfumed breath mutate into cigarettes.

   You never smoked near me though. You knew it made me cough and wheeze.

   But then you did.

   I smelt that smoke twirl up my nostrils, closing up my throat, tempting me with a taste.

   Why did you?

                             Why?