I don't think you are pretty when you're still

You have made yourself beautiful in the same vein as a fresh coat of white paint. But, you lack longevity.

No, I don’t think you are pretty when you are still.

I don’t think of you as pretty when I can practically see through that poreless forehead into the incessant, mindless declarations of motionlessness; when I can tell that you’re thinking so hard about the wrinkles which the scrunch of your nose might lead to.

I don’t think that you are pretty with your hair slicked back, or your teeth lined straight, or your stomach flat. You are perfect, but you are not pretty. You have made yourself beautiful in the same vein as a fresh coat of white paint. But, you lack longevity. You are so perfect, smooth, small, pale. You are uncanny, a porcelain doll which no child has dared to play with for fear of being scolded. You are a representation of repressed joy, you are a symbol of a preserved beauty which amounts – ultimately – to nothingness.

So, no dear, I don’t think you are pretty when you are perfectly still.

I think that you are pretty with the untucked strands of your braided hair in the morning, when you have been tossing and turning, tangled in the thick comfort of coffee-stained bedsheets.

I think that you are pretty in the bathroom mirror, in your underwear and my t-shirt and no bra, with purple eyebags and toothpaste on the side of your mouth. When you look at me in the reflection and laugh, and your upper lip rides past your crooked teeth and reveals your gums, when your eyes screw tight shut and your eyebrows furrow downwards. Then, I think you are pretty.

I think, especially, that you are pretty when I see you folded over laughing on the sofa, and your stomach pudges over the top of your comfy trousers. When you cook, and there is food all over you, and you are focused, with those frown lines set deep in your face. I think you look pretty when you walk the dog in the evening, and you come home with mud splashed up your trousers and a grumpy face because you stepped in something disgusting on your walk.

Of course, dear, you are so beautiful when you put on that long purple dress over that shapewear and you carefully brush on that makeup palette which your mother bought for you six Christmases ago. With your hair straight down your back, and your lips bigger, and your skin smoothed out. When you smile for my camera and you look past the lens into my eyes and make my heart stop. You are so beautiful when you are dancing with your friends, and when you are drunk and crying in the smoking area outside, and when you are stumbling over your own feet trying to get in the taxi home. But -- dare I say -- you are prettier still when you ask me that same night to unzip you from that deep aubergine fabric and run my hands down the moles across your back, when you sigh from relief and rest your head back on my shoulder.

You are prettiest when you let me see you in full, when you let me know you: laughing and crying and falling and sleeping and cooking and walking the dog and stepping in shit, frowning and smiling and wrinkled and fat. You are pretty to me, not because you are beautiful, but because you are whole.

Because you are moving, and chipped, and crooked.

So, no my love, I don’t think you are pretty when you are perfectly still.