Knees

Our school uniforms were designed to remove any beauty that could be found in our bodies. Collared shirts, sweater vests, cardigans, blazers, knee high socks, and pleated skirts that hung too low. They covered us in layers, burying the truths hidden underneath. 

Our individuality was found in the in-betweens. We found each other in the parts they never expected us to.

I found you in your knees. They were slipped in between your navy socks and the hem of your grey skirt. The color of cream with freckles that mapped out your heart. They were knobby. They were yours. You crossed one over the other or pressed them together. When you laughed, those full laughs that take over your whole body, you lifted them into the air and slammed them down again.

I learned in class once that when someone is attracted to another, they point their feet towards them. I oriented myself towards you whenever I had the chance. My hands reached for yours but found themselves gripped around rosaries. My lips parted to whisper in your ear, but my vocal cords were choked by incense, only released to stutter out "Our Fathers" - broken prayers for a girl with a broken relationship with God. 

I spoke to you in my own secret language, one I'll never know if you knew to understand. I knelt.

I knelt in church and beside my bed and I imagined your knees holding you up too. Holding up the weight of this uniform, the weight of this God, the weight of us. Your knees were precious. They did not deserve to put be rubbed raw by the wooden floors of the chapel. You didn't deserve this. We didn't deserve this.

I wonder if your mother kissed your scraped knees when you were young. I wonder if those kisses healed the wounds and stopped the tears. I wonder if those uniforms hadn't covered up all those parts of you if she could have kissed your wrists too. 

I kneel now at your grave. The pebbles dig into my flesh and create tears into my skin that cannot be healed. There's six feet of ground we can never cover.

I mend the shattered phrases in the "Our Father." I pray that when you knelt before Him that He saw you in your entirety. That He saw the good and the beauty you had in those knees and that He looked upon you with loving grace and opened the gates of Heaven for you.