How to Tell a Girl She's Beautiful

You tell her she’s beautiful.
She looks at you like you’ve suddenly grown two heads.
Then, she gives a self-deprecating laugh followed by a “Don’t be silly.”
You figure she must have missed what you said. So, you repeat the words again and tell her that you’re serious.
This time, she scoffs and replies, “Seriously, you need to get your eyes checked.”
It is quite frustrating when you tell her she’s beautiful and she refuses to believe you.

She tries to cover up her mouth when she laughs.
Her eyes, when she looks at you, are apologetic.
She never stays long in front of  the mirror because she has only learned to see flaws and disappointments there.
They say beauty is only skin deep.
Only?
It’s the skin she lives in.
It’s deep enough to hold all her insecurities and doubts.
But sometimes, it’s not deep enough to keep her self-confidence from bleeding out when words are thrown as jabs against her skin.

You don’t know a lot of things in life.
You don’t know why bad things happen to good people.
You don’t know what dreams are made of.
You don’t know how a person who always tends to see the beauty in others fail to see it in herself.
But what irks you the most is that you don’t know how to tell her she’s beautiful.

Then you realize something.
Her beauty is a poem that you need to paraphrase. She has been reading the poem all wrong and you need to put it in a way that she will understand.

So, you tell her about the smile that makes you happy. The one that starts at the corner of her lips and lights up her whole face. Hopefully, she’ll realize that you’ve been stowing away all the little things that make her smile to every nook and cranny available in your memory.

You let her know about the way her eyes shine when she tells you something she’s passionate about…. Like her dreams and equal rights and cats and that one TV character she claims is her soul-mate.

You compliment her on the way she carries herself in the face of whatever obstacles and challenges life throws her way, head held high with a strong sense of determination and dignity.

And you think it’s working.
She’s slowly starting to realize what you mean when you tell her she’s beautiful.

You mean that she’s beautiful when she’s being herself, unapologetically so.

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