She was a broken piece of art

I wanted to be her frame

Pain made her beautiful

I'm sure she didn't intend to be this way

Nevertheless, I saw beauty in the way she embodied pain

The subtlest parts of her

made her stand out

She was often unapologetic about her strikingness

The way she was

The way she viewed things

The way she looked at what she wanted

and what she didn't

It was deeper than confidence

it was a sort of acceptance, of who she was

a core even her deepest insecurities could not penetrate

She always looked at me in a peculiar way

even though I wasn’t sure she was particularly trying to

It was the kind of look that didn't give anything away

Not because she didn't want to

But because there was nothing to give

Everything she had to say was in her eyes

I often felt her eyes saw what others did not see

Often not knowing what to say

I would freeze up

I resisted being seen

She made me question a lot of things

She made me question what I considered to be myself

I’m sure she didn’t intend to

In fact, when it came to me, I don’t think she ever had any intentions

I only felt her gaze

a gaze too deep for intentions to convey

I could never make sense of them

They were beneath the surface of sense making

And sense making, was all I had

I would get stuck often,

trying to decode it

trying to decode her

“are you real?”

Her gaze would often ask

There were no intentions behind the questions

They were strong enough to stand for themselves

They reflected parts of myself I always pretended wasn't there

they illuminated the gaps

I’m sure she didn’t intend to

In her eyes,

I was probably just another guy

After all,

art never sees its audience

even if it sees through them