Abdi Nazemian

Exquisite Things

Lindsay

Those eyes. I’ve missed their warmth. The way they always look like they’re melting. Moist and alive. Years of accumulated sadness in their afterglow. The most beautiful things in the world always look like they’re about to break. I speak a Wilde quote that comes to me aloud. “Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”

She sees all that’s wrong with the world. Doesn’t ignore it. But she refuses to let the awfulness define her. I think it’s her knowledge of the brutality around us that makes her work so hard to provide light.

The setting sun has turned the sky a devastatingly beautiful orange. Like the color of a calm fire, not the kind of flames that could ever burn or hurt you, simply the kind that will warm and heal you. I suppose all beautiful things are like that. They can be used to heal or to destroy. That is, perhaps, the magic behind their beauty.

I hear her deflate with a sigh. I know she pretends, too. Her happiness is a costume she wears for others. Underneath it is her quiet grief.

Sometimes, most times honestly, my own ability to pretend I’m something I’m not sickens me. I don’t think of myself as a liar, and yet, I’m so skilled at it. Faking comes so naturally when I’m with Mother, Liam, my classmates, coaches and teachers. Perhaps I’m just weak. Or maybe, as my cousin Brendan says, I’m simply too concerned with pleasing others, Mother in particular. But what’s wrong with wanting others to be happy?

And men tend to destroy when they can do as they please.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. 

Exquisite Things

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