One Place She Doesn't Hide

I have been living somewhere at the bottom of this woman’s purse since she was a little girl, actually, from her backpack days to her clutch days. Her aunt gifted me to her on her 11th birthday, and I have witnessed how she has seen herself in me throughout the years. From the days when she would groan every time she looked at me, spotting a new pimple and thinking she was the ugliest girl to ever walk the earth, to the first time her friend gave her a lipstick right before leaving school. She was so excited to see her lips pink and sparkly, trying not to rub them together too much or nearly eating the lipstick. Taking me out every three minutes to take another glance.

On their way home, they passed a group of boys from a nearby high school, and that day, she got her first long whistle. She giggled with her friend and quickened her pace. Just before turning into their alley, she took out a tissue and made sure I showed no glitter or colour on her lips before she walked into the house. Her mom’s questioning look wasn’t what she wanted to remember this day by.

I was her companion through years of dating. The last-second glances on the bus to check her eyeliner and hair before getting off at the rendezvous. The breakups when she checked her eyes to see how puffy and red they were before heading home. But it was mostly her red nose that was the telltale sign, one she didn’t want questioned.

I saw every last glance before walking into a job interview, every nose powdering in the middle of a party, and that god-awful day when she used me to check a bruise under her eye. Thankfully, that was the last time I saw that kind of sorrow in her eyes. In that moment, she promised herself it would be the last time she’d see that colour anywhere on her face, and it was.

Years and years have passed, and I am old and faded. The once-bright roses on me have turned to pale shadows, and I make a creaking sound when she opens me up, yet she still won’t replace me. These days, I see wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, lines forming from her nose all the way to the corner of her lips when she smiles, and strands of white in her shiny hair. But to me, she is still that beautiful little girl. Every time she looks at me, I hope to see those deep dimples appear when she smiles. That is when her eyes sparkle.