June Miles: A Character Sketch

Inspiration doesn’t come easy, believe me I know. To me inspiration is June Miles. She is just as hard to keep up with. You would be surprised to know how complex she is at a flimsy age of 20; not to mention the phrase ‘You’re so mature for your age’ was almost a subtitle that went with her introduction. Maybe it was the occasional stuffing of emotions or the usual keeping things to herself, because she always thinks she knows better, that made her so deep, too deep to condense into a paragraph. So I’m letting loose right here. She’s a mess but oh my God so beautiful. She never takes the compliment though, or maybe she does, but she always tells me,

We’re all beautiful. We just assume that we’re not just because we’re all messed up. We’re meant to be a mess with a highly functional mind like this.

She is often heard talking this way. In her defense she doesn’t do it consciously.

I just see these subliminal meanings everywhere, I don’t even know how!

She apologizes if it’s annoying though, so she’s nice like that. If you ever want to spot June in a crowd full of people, she’s the one with brown eyes and shoulder length black hair that doesn’t quite stay sane so she’s brushing her hand through it all the time. She’s the one with over-sized clothes, that once used to just hang loose but now she has grown a liking to wrapping them a little tighter to her body. I want to say it’s because she grew a little more comfortable in her own skin. She’s the one talking crap all the time, but crap that makes sense, crap that we never noticed was around us, crap that somehow seems so acceptable, bearable and wonderful when she speaks about it. She’s the one with an extroverted exterior but on the inside she wants to do nothing but go home and snuggle in a blanket, hang out a little with peace. Peace is not a good friend of hers, sadly. She finds it hard to befriend peace which frustrates her sometimes but hey, she’s still hopeful. Manages with the little of what she can see of peace.

Here’s the thing about June, she’s rather simple and ironically complex. Once I called her a paradox and she just smiled and shrugged. To her everything is possible. She thinks everything just sort of..exists.

And we have no power to deny that it doesn’t.

She’s deemed nice by most people. Even the ones that break promises, the ones that say one thing today and disappear tomorrow, the ones that tell her she deserves all the love in the world but usually have none to give to her. Even they think she is nice. She thinks she’s amazing though.

You know what I really like about her? All these little things that she is so passionate about but she’s so ditsy that she will forget about it all when posed with the question. She likes the smell of dried henna, the feel of cold sheets against her skin, the smell of winter, holding hands, when people put their head on her shoulder and so many things that are so menial but somehow so vital. She also dislikes a few things. Like when her fingernails scrape an unwanted surface, when people chew with their mouths open, when she gets a shoe bite, when she is finally in a peaceful space but it gets disrupted, when she ends up doing too much for someone, every time; and so many more things that she speaks of once but never again because

Something you hate doesn’t deserve to be pondered upon. It doesn’t deserve any space in your head.

and then half an hour later she’ll come back to ask

Why can’t I cancel my thoughts? Like just ban them.

She’s ridiculous.

Standing just as tall as 5’6, you can always find her thinking about everything that has ever happened to her. She doesn’t admit it but I sometimes think if she is sad. She says it’s all momentary. I asked her where she learned all these good things from. She said she learned it from me and some other songs that she listens to. That’s the thing about her. She will learn something you don’t teach her. She’ll read you even if you are a blank white page. And then she’ll narrate you so good you’ll feel gorgeous.

She used to write about people that she liked. I once asked her, “why do you do that?”

“Everyone needs appreciation no matter how much they deny it. I write about the ones I admire.” she shrugged

“Who wrote about you then?”

“She laughed, “nobody.”

“Ever?” I asked with wide eyes to which she just smiled and shook her head no.

So this one’s for you June Miles, the one who is struggling with college yet manages to have the time of her life; who hopes not to be tied to a desk job; who likes The Lumineers a little too much; who smells like a meadow and feels like the perfect blanket.

You’re like a million drops of rain gnawing on the interiors of a cloud, begging it to open so they could be set free and bring relief to people like us.

And I write this to admire your existence.

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