A Love Letter To The Girls We Were…and Once Knew
“The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely submerged in the pool of autumn twilight. She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”
― J.D. Salinger, A Girl I Knew
I think, Dear Reader, that I once knew this same girl.
It’s possible, Dear Reader, that you did, too.
In fact, I might even still see her from time to time. The way the breeze catches a leaf and blows it, dancing, across the path. In the whisper of my neighbor’s cello as it reaches me in my office. Out of the corner of my eye as I turn my head and glance up at the moon.
She is me.
She is you.
She is every girl who ever stood for any moment in any place and was, ever-so-briefly, observed. In all her calm and knowing, in all her beauty and perfection, in all of the glory of who she was.
And oh, what glory!
No doubt the observer felt their eyes mist, ever-so-briefly. Their heart paused, just for a moment. No doubt their breath caught quite suddenly in their throat.
No doubt they saw Her. And never forgot it.
For in that moment, she was, indeed, “holding the universe together,” and that is, without doubt, a moment to remember.
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