Even If You Were Hanging Off The Edge Of A Cliff, With A White Knuckle Grip And Only Me To Save You,

I'm a long way from the girl who sat under the mango tree, in the back of the school and listen to cars passing by on the highway after school. She would close her eyes and pretend the sound of the cars on the road were the sound of waves crashing on the shoreline. She had the wildest and most vivid imagination. I look at her now in photos and memories, and I realize, I'm not that kid anymore, I'm not. The magic of the world isn't held in my eyes anymore.

—Camille Lee, 4:30 p.m.

do you think you can write something using the words iridescent💎 or fractal~🌈✨?" 👀

I closed my eyes as I felt the warm water on my skin, cascading through my hair, down my neck and down my back. I run my palms over my damp hair and I open my eyes to see the way the sunlight catches the water from the showerhead, through the bathroom window. I smile as I think to myself it looks like a mini waterfall, magical, ethereal and otherworldly. Like little tiny fairies should be fluttering around the water that seems to sparkle at this time of day. Iridescent shampoo bubbles dance off the tiled walls and pop. In the stillness and silence, I remember living isn't only in the grand, but also in the quietness of a bath after a long hard day.

—Camille Lee, iridescent shampoo bubbles

Love is the one who holds the ladder when I climb up to change the curtains. Love is the one that insists "let me do it, it's dangerous." but love is afraid of heights and holds the ladder with a white knuckle grip, despite the fall only being three feet deep. "It's still a long way to fall." Love is knowing I must be the one to change the curtains no matter what love says because love is still deathly afraid of heights, and love is mine to protect as much as I am theirs.

— Camille Lee, love is the one who holds the ladder

You and I were stranded. Trapped, in the school’s gymnasium. The rain was starting to coming down, it was pouring. There was this hummingbird rhythm in my chest, loud as drums, where you and I lie, side by side, in dark blue skirts and white school shirts, on worn gym mats. The sound compelling, if I let it. Supposedly my feelings lie on some sort of spectrum? All I know is you and I, no matter what, aren't clear cut. I fantasize, or do I fetishize? I'm hoping you don’t realize, I want to kiss between your eyes, and that mine linger on your thighs. Echoes in a empty colosseum, ourselves as our own audience and with no one to witness it. I’m too young to know what I want, young and confused, in a "phase I'll grow out of eventually." Does it mean anything? If your hands linger on my waist? You make a mistake in your haste, kiss the corner of my lips instead of my cheek, before you leave. You giggle, because what else could it possibly mean? 

—Camille Lee, her

You say you can't understand. You say how can I be ok, walking around with this brave face, but if I crawl into your lap and rest my head on your chest, will you keep my tears? Like a badge of honour over your heart? Cradle me, like a child, is there nothing to fear, as long as you're here? Does my pain scare you?

— Camille Lee, will you hold me like a child?

I dreamt of you last night, you and I talked so much, more than we do in real life, it was nice. I don't remember what we said, I think all we did was fight as we usually did, but still it was nice, because I got to talk to you again last night.

—Camille Lee, it was nice to talk to you

Loneliness is a wounded beast, roaring and clawing at the walls of my heart, wailing for reprieve, relief for his suffering. A balm, a salve for injuries he can't see, with no end in sight, maybe a mercy kill is instead what he should seek. He couldn't talk and even if he tried, I doubt you'd understand his cries, "Come get me out, these four walls are so empty, somebody please come find me."

— Camille Lee, Loneliness is a wounded beast

I'm not religious but I prayed for this, I begged the sky, I pleaded with the earth, the dirt under my fingers, fistfuls in each hand, the grass beneath my feet and the rocks scraping my knees. I implored the planet, the cosmos and the isolating, quiet of the pitch-black backdrop of the abyss, of the universe, of the stars and all that exists far beyond my reach. please, please send me the one, the perfect one, the destined one, my other half, my soulmate, the one to complete me. I don't believe in love at first sight but I still wish to be loved unabashedly. I stumble in my prayer, does such a person even exist? am I incomplete?

—Camille Lee

An old sparkly journal is buried at the bottom of a weathered and worn, old cardboard box. Every other page has an "I ♡ Alex" written in pink ink on it. That girl used count every hand-holding, shoulder-touch, head-pat her first real crush ever gave her and wrote it all down. "He held my hand and rest his head on my shoulder." Fast forward three years and I started a new school, I'm fifteen years old and I reminisce fondly over my younger self's crush, at a party. Everyone around me mistakes my smile as lingering feelings for him, after all, I wasn't very subtle with my feelings back then. They just don't know. Now with older eyes to look back with, I realized something. I was always made of love. Love was never something I had to look for outside of me, it was always within me, I just didn't know it. I am love and love was always made of me.

—Camille Lee, love is what I was always made of