Girl
by Silvia
There is that girl, the one who never liked you much, and she was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen, young and haughty with her smile and tousled hair. You can't forget her.
There is that girl, the one you watched wrap a thick ponytail back about her hands, knotting it behind her neck against the faintest dash of freckles - sprinkled like pepper on a salt lick.
She's the type of girl who would own a salt lick. She's the type to ride horses.
She would use her strong, skinny legs to pass you, perhaps dreaming of that pony. Red stained lips and red skinned knees, bared to the wind as she rushed against it.
You would knock her into the dirt to see her skirt smear with a chalky, reddish brown, stiff from the clay you swear must be set into the Hogwart's grounds, that makes walking feel like painting, scuffles like sculpting.
Art hid in the rougher cracks of your fists. All gone -- used up in clumsy, thick fingered sketching of her slim shoulders and the light hitting them just right -- but it lived there for a brief time, and you blame her for it.
You blame her for that ache in your side, on the right, just below the third rib, and press two fingers to it before a storm, when it aches the hardest.
You had her in a headlock, boxing her up like you would only need some string and a ribbon, and she stared back at you, the first moment afterwards. Stared and struck, sharp enough to feel when it rains. Banked fire in her eyes, much as they are now.
That girl, she's standing on your doorstep.
She wants to come in.
She lives here, she moved into the flat two summers ago and brought oddly still furniture.
You met her in a bar that girls find if it's what they're looking for, and they don't have to know it. Farthest eastern edge of Diagon Alley, a shadow behind the stand where they sell sweet rolls for a sickle.
She said, "Do I know you?" and you bought her a drink, because you were all grown up. At least, you thought so.
You thought, too, that you would never have her.
You've been known to be wrong.
When you said, "No," you didn't consider it a lie. She didn't ask what you knew -- which was good, because with all of youur years, you still don't have that long.
"Would like to?" you said, and pictured the slope of her retreating back, the swing of her hair, her open mouth against the waif in the corner, against girls who get girls like her.
You thought of the nape of her neck, the color of butterscotch.
And said goodbye the moment before she was sticking out her hand, sliding a thumb under your wrist, saying hello.
[note: this painting I found, most certainly not done by me, is how I picture an older Millicent]
