It’s been a few years, I think. You’ve grown. You stopped being that naive little girl that smiled to everyone and everything, taking joy in the whole world and embracing it with your tiny arms.

Your features hardened. The fine dark locks of hair that used to stick out of pigtails and bow-tied braids are now styled into a fashionable ‘do. The short hair makes you look even wiser, stronger, as if you were a statue, a beautiful masterpiece carved out of the most expensive marble.

Your once blue eyes are now a mixture of every color between dark grey and a pale green, the tiny flecks of silver and blue littering your irises. Your long eyelashes are carefully made-up with mascara, widening the windows to your enticing soul, making them look like the sky, surrounded by black pines. You know, when you stand in a forest and look up, it seems as though the trees frame the blue to prevent it from escaping your view... Just like those eyes of yours.

Your lips, the lips that once used to part on every occasion to reveal a missing tooth or two, which you displayed proudly, taking them our of your pocket, are now coated with dark plum lipstick. They’ve become fuller, I realize, now those lips are no longer made for smiling. Now, they’re made for kissing.

Your hands, the ones that used to bear short nails with glittery nail polish and stickers, have become long-fingered - a pianist’s hands. The nails are long and beautiful, covered with black nail polish that contrast with the milky white of your skin.

The body that belonged to a girl is no longer there. It answers to the same name, it even has some resemblance to what once used to be in its place, but now it’s tall and curvy, forming a beautiful hourglass of a figure. The pink frilly dresses are gone, replaced by low-cut jeans and suggestive tank-tops, leaving nothing to imagination. And I see it, every time you walk, heads turn and jaws go slack.

You’re desirable. Men and women alike stare at you, some in admiration, some with jealousy, while others have pure he**-ridden lust lurking in their gaze, only wishing for a moment to strike.

But every time you laugh at my jokes with that sweet voice of yours and puff that tiny slim cigarette you like so much, I feel proud, for I’m the only one who can hear that bell-chime laugh, still unstained by nicotine and age.

I feel a jolt when you place your hands over mine and lean in to whisper something into my ear, something you consider naughty or slightly wrong to say.

I listen to you, openmouthed, and there is nothing to bring me back to reality. I’m lost in you.

My, little girl. How have you grown...