Written by Kiwi.
Published here with permission.
There’s a kind of girl that’s just about anything and everything and absolutely nothing all at once. A puzzle girl, a sort of Rubix Cube incarnate. Everyone knows at least one. She’s the type of girl where you could gather together all her friends and they could each probably tell you her favorite color, her favorite movie, her favorite moment from the summer before last. They could tell you all about her strings of boyfriends and various neurotic habits. They could probably capture a general descriptive image of her personality for you within 200 words and they’d definitely have a story or two to tell as well. But ask everyone to sit down and piece together her life’s story from birth canal to last night’s sushi boat dinner for you and they wouldn’t even be able to agree on the most basic of chronological maps. They might not even be able to agree on the correct spelling of her real name. Does she even *have* a real name?
She’s a subconscious magician with invisible arms that are always protecting her with tricks and sleight of hand. She’s the kind of girl that never lets you notice how truly elusive she really is. Those physically around her will confidently tell you that yes, they know her, and that she’s open with everything about her. Yet look closer and you’ll find that she’ll have many more friends that she’s rarely around who somehow know far more about her intimacies. She’s the girl that likes a sense of distance one way or another. She’ll keep you physically close but emotionally distant, emotionally close but physically distant. And even in those rare instances when you think she’s allowed you both, it only takes you a minute to realize that she’s still far away enough to run at a moment’s notice. She’s the girl that never stops balancing her own need for security with everyone else’s need for comfort.
A changeling, a chameleon, a mystery, a coward. Whatever the name, the species exists. Always available, but only on her terms, always loving, but only at her pace. Always the same prism but never the same face. She’s the girl that everyone knows everything and nothing about.