post 10 : compliments

Complaints have always brushed over me; I pay them no attention. They are words with no meaning, no thought, even. They fail to shock or surprise. They are put in place of something real, instead of showing how you feel.

I am almost appalled at myself when I wake to find a note on the pillow where he last night slept and at reading the carefully penned words, am unable to contain the smile that spreads across my face and the heat that rushes to my cheeks.

“You are frightfully attractive, staggeringly intriguing, and delightfully quirky (as if you didn’t know).”

I grab the note and lie back down, hold it above my head and read it again. And again. He’d thought about it; actually thought about it. Intriguing, quirky; these are not words one would be accustomed to using when describing a person of interest. I wonder what I had done to intrigue him; if it was an isolated incident. I like that he likes these things about me, that he didn’t use ‘beautiful’ or ‘smart’ as I’d so often heard yet struggled to believe and wondered why they even mattered.

Just as I am about to close my eyes and attempt to drift back to sleep I notice some writing on the back of the page.

“Perhaps ‘you are delectable’ would have sufficed.”

And just like that, he’s got me captivated. I think of him the entire day. I wonder if he’s thought this all along, and is only now saying it because he has been allowed the opportunity. I wonder if these feelings are new.