Once upon a time, there was a girl. She was made of paper. When she was ten, she fell in love with a boy whose smile shook the inner walls of her heart and whose voice inspired her to write the many poems she kept hidden beneath her bed. It was a secret she never told anybody that she was made of  delicately woven grains of paper, for fear that they would leave, like the many others who did. So she swore to the stars and the leaves that turned brown that night that she would never tell a soul.

But then there was a boy named Jamie.

When they were fifteen, he held her hand for the very first time. The grey curtain of clouds loomed close by, and when the first drop of rain fell on her face, she tried to pull her quickly to a shelter nearby. He wouldn't budge. He held her hand so tight if he never let do, she imagined how she would crumble into ashes and leave no trace behind. So she stood beside him beneath the rain, and waited for her body to soak and smudge, but it didn't. She was made of paper, yet under the rain, because he held her hand she didn't break,

When they were seventeen, he kissed her for the first time. When their lips met she felt herself burn at his touch, so she pulled away abruptly that when she did, she felt the world sway slightly off balance and the rest of the universe was thrown off alignment. As soon as she pulled away, she'd regretted it. Wide-eyes, she saw the hurt in his eyes, and right then and there, she has longed to tell him the many things she wanted to tell him but couldn't. The she was made of paper. That inside her was a paper heart and a paper soul. But she kissed him again, this time without hesitation. and she didn't burst into flames like how she had pictured it. She was made of paper, but she didn't crumble into ashes like how she had pictured it.

When they were nineteen, he'd written words on her arm and no matter how many times she would rub away the ink with her fingers, they remained. When he left, she didn't cry. Instead she wrote letters to him on her other arm. When there was no more space, she wrote some more beneath his messy handwriting, and then on her palms and then on her feet, and when there was no more space, she wrote about him on her heart and on her soul. Because that was the only way she could remember him.

The girl who was made of paper and fell in love.