daylight: honesty | 2027
she’s beautiful. the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen.
you tell her so. often. you’re not good with words, and you can’t iterate just when and why she gives your stomach butterflies, so you just say you look really good today. she smiles and says you’re just as pretty and she looks nice because she’s good with make-up and skincare and whatever else care that she has noted down somewhere. people have told her so.
your hair looks so good!; your eye color is so pretty! (she doesn’t like this one but usually she thanks them anyway); can you tell me what you use for your skin? (she loves this question, you notice from the way the corners of her lips shoot up.)
but they don’t know when she looks best:
when you kiss her first, and it makes her smile so wide her large eyes turn into crescent moons, when she’s asleep next to you, arms circling your waist, face so pale but so serene in the dark, when she has her head tucked into the crook of your neck and she looks up at you with twinkling eyes.
you’re glad they don’t know. never before have you felt so selfish, so childish, but you want to have her beauty hidden for you and you alone. you wonder how you didn’t realize all the you’re so beautiful you’d said to her weren’t out of admiration. or how you thought the sour tinge in your heart when she was around boys was because you wished you could be pretty like her too, when it was jealousy all along. you were ridiculous.
but at least you’re here now, next to her. reveling in her beauty every second you’re with her, unabashed, undeterred.










