As she walks it's hard to keep pace. She moves quickly, with purpose in every step. Like she has somewhere to go, and nothing and no one will get in her way. It has been this way for years. Her whole life, really. It is one of the only obvious remains of the city she loves so dearly, but had to leave behind.
Music is her heartbeat. Every note what makes her tick. In the rare instance that you see her without her headphones, you can bet she's humming a tune. Or using lyrics in everyday conversation. There's a song for any situation, she says. You just have to hear it.
She sees beauty everywhere she looks, almost always in unexpected places. What stands out most though, is the beauty she sees in the broken. Nothing is too flawed in her eyes. Nothing too decayed. After all, she knows how it feels to be broken. She spent the greater part of her life slowly crumbling, like a building that had survived a blast. Never completely leveled, but not stable enough to keep from slowly falling.
There she stood for many years. The cracks growing deeper and the pieces falling faster, until almost all that remained was rubble. And when the time came that what little left was on the verge of collapse, she realized, by some miracle, that it wasn't her time. It was then that the rebuild and restoration began.
Slowly.
And that is where she is today. While the dust from the fall hasn't settled, and the smoke from the blast still lingers, for the first time in 18 years she can see past it.
She can see through her camera. Something she had lost for so long. The viewfinder, again, is her eyes to the world. She sees the darkness and the light. The growth and the destruction. The beginning and the end. And when she captures it in photos, it's beauty that others see.
Her love for baseball runs deep. You could say she's a junkie when it comes to the game. She longs for New York. Walking the streets before dawn, when the city's all her own.
She's empathetic to a fault and a master of to-do lists. Her closet is a rainbow of olive, maroon, black, and lace. She loves fiercely with a guarded heart, and writes poetry that no one sees.
She's "a flower child with a rock and roll heart", and once you meet her, you'll never forget her. That's what others say, anyway. But in her mind, in all of her brokenness, that could not be any farther from the truth.
- ALL LOVE -
Bailey Elizabeth
Comments