All American Beauty

She was easy...easy to look at...easy to say you knew. An all American beauty. Her perfectly manicured, pale pink nails would trace playfully across that opal shell necklace she always wore. Teasing. Enticing. The hot sun would caress her glistening, tanned skin as if that simple pleasure was its sole purpose. She always wore white, and the color complimented her. That day she wore a little white bikini, and a white ribbon tied up her shining yellow hair. Jealousy and lust tended to follow her in gazes and remarks, but it was undeserving. The girl was pure. Her truths were never important though, what mattered was what they saw. Her eyes sparkled like the ocean, crystal blue. She always adored the ocean. They adored her at the ocean. It was a cotton candy afternoon, and on days like that she would awaken from the depths of her poetry book and slip into the deep Caribbean waters. She liked to dive into the waves as they curled over her slim figure, swimming down to the rolling sands and running her fingers over their soft surface. Sometimes she would even lay there a moment, wishing to fall asleep and wake up as something else. No one saw that part of her though. They saw her perfect face and perfect life. That day, everyone was watching but no one truly saw her. Those crystal blue eyes had become a hurricane and her breath raged as the desert storms. They didn’t understand and it weighed upon her, too heavy, far too heavy. She was not a pretty picture, but her hair still shone and her skin still glistened and her nails still shimmered pink, so how were they to guess? The sun beat down painfully. The heat suffocated her. She fled to the silent ocean’s numbing embrace, but to all the world it seemed as if her steps were simple and easy...as if each step wasn’t burning her but revealed a pretty pleasure. A wave rolled gently towards her and she thanked it, diving deep into the water’s arms. Her pain never came with her into the depths, and she sighed in the feeling’s remote relief. As the air blew out of her lungs, she dreamed that her nails became little blushing shells and that her golden skin melted into the silky ocean floor. It was an opal dream, sheer and iridescent and alluring. I like to believe that it came true.