Beauty — Kevin Tyrone McMillion Jr.

I once mistook the word BEAUTY for something solid, a stone or a fruit, something to be carried, to be held, to be eaten, but when she passed through the room I saw how wrong I was. Her face was not carried but carrying, dragging even the walls toward her, and in the drag I felt my own skin slipping loose, as if I too were being made visible by her. WE ARE BEAUTY! I imagined us shouting, all at once, together, without her. BEAUTY! BEAUTY! She would not shout, of course, but continue walking as though our declaration were a mist, an unremarkable weather. And yet, in her shadow I discovered how brittle my body was, how easily folded into spectacle. Her eyes were a tribunal, her smile an indictment, and I, sitting in the small chair of myself, could only nod, and feel the room tilt toward her, again and again, as though pulled by an unseen verdict no one dares appeal.