Work Text:
The red headed girl sat at her desk, surrounded by crumpled pages of her own words. Her hands were stained with ink spots, and there was ink on her nose from wiping her face with inky hands. Ink, ink, ink and more ink. She saw the way it blemished her skin, and wondered if there was a metaphor in there. Or maybe an unsubtle signal from someone, somewhere, that what she was doing was wrong. She sighed, and lay her head on her desk. She knew that something was wrong. Diana. There was nothing wrong about writing a poem for your dearest friend. There was absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to write a poem for your dearest friend. And if, for the sake of intellectual exercise, you decided to write a poem for your dearest friend as if you were, say, a man who was in love with her, it might have been a bit queer, but certainly not wrong. She read them again, the lines that were bothering her:
When I were young I used to see
The beauty in sky and clouds and sea
But not fields of green nor sands of red
Compare to the shimmering hairs on your head.
She knew the whole see-sea rhyme was weak, and she had vowed to fix it. And she could admit that “hairs on your head” was a little redundant, maybe. But it wasn’t the structure that bothered her, or even the merits of the poem at all. It was the way reading it brought her heart to her throat, made her eyes begin to well with tears. If this were but an intellectual exercise, an experiment in what someone else might feel, it shouldn’t have been so affecting. And the more she read, the more she wondered where this idea came from, whether other girls would think to write love poems to their friends, no matter what pen name they hid behind.
She flung her chair back from her desk, and went to stand in front of the mirror, appraising herself. She knew she wasn’t pretty, at least not by most measures. Her freckled skin and her orange hair sealed that fate for her. But Diana had never seemed to mind. Diana’s beauty— the dark hair, the dimpled cheeks, the glittering eyes— had never been a point of pride to her. Someone, like Diana, who has always been pretty is able to say that appearances don’t matter one bit. And perhaps she meant it, spending all those years with Anne. Where Diana was soft and full, Anne was all sharp points and edges. And since her growth spurt at 15, Anne had towered over Diana, who was a modest, acceptable height. Perhaps Anne’s feelings were nothing but that familiar female jealousy, a wish to be more like her friend. Such feelings would be undesirable, but ultimately met with knowing nods by any she confided in them; after all, who, seeing the pair, would have believed she didn’t wish to look more like her friend.
And yet, seeing her form, all her flaws, Anne wasn’t wishing she were more like Diana. Her feelings toward her friend had none of the bitterness of envy. Instead, there was a sharper note, a taste she feared to put a name to. Everytime she was around Diana these days, there was a buzz in the air. An energy that seemed to fill the space between them and push them together. She pictured Diana’s face, Diana’s body, and she didn’t envy her; she wanted to touch her.
And Diana? Dear, sweet, wholesome Diana? Was there a chance, any chance at all, that she might wish in that same way for Anne?
She sat back at her desk, and pulled a pen and fresh paper towards her. Dearest Diana, she wrote, I have a poem for you.