Unsolicited Advice for Quiet Girls with Kind Eyes

after Jeanann Verlee

When the boy on the street with his friends, all wearing matching neon-colored wife beaters, tells you that you dress like an old woman, take it as a compliment. When your crush tells you you’re beautiful, do not disagree. Tell him that his girlfriend is too. When your first boyfriend tells you to do something to prove that you love him, leave him. When he gets angry and grabs you as if you are a bar-code that belongs to him, leave him and run. When you come home searching your body for any purity it has left, if any, do not blame yourself. Hug yourself instead. Stand in front of that ever-insulting mirror and tell yourself that you are stronger than the glass that is trying to tell you you’re ugly because he touched you. The glass is dirty too. Do not try to scrub off the debris on your body from the places that you once thought love was hiding in, when you shower. Do not peel your skin for him, you are not the serpent here. Do not try to clean out the hidden, jagged, crescent-edge corners of your pomegranate skin because you think it will make his hands un-touch you, because you think it will make his eyes unsee you, because you think it will erase memories. It won’t. And don’t think that it has to.

When your crush tells you you’re beautiful, do not disagree. Say, “I know.” And walk away.