Her name was Delilah. An exotic name for a plain girl. We all have Delilahs in our lives. They never seem to speak up, just stand, watching life go by. They nod, speak when spoken to, and never retort back. They are, in a word, “yes-men”. Funnily enough, they usually go the furthest in the end. Because people love to wrap themselves in a coat of usualness, to make them feel like they are different to others.

Her name was Delilah. Her plain, green eyes scanned the page of the little hardback book, its few pages worn from so many other children using it. Mary and Tom go to the store. Mary and Tom like the store. Yes, Delilah decided, Mary and Tom do like the store. Because that is how people think. They are first drawn to the things they understand, then decide to leave them behind for more interesting things. The children do not like Delilah. She is not interesting. The others are interesting. They like them. The poor, innocent child spun a tale around herself, because she did not understand the world outside of her head. Her mind, so wild and untamed, with perhaps all of the universe’s secrets hidden in the leafy glen of her cranium. So within reach. Brushing at your fingertips, out of sight. Crushed. Because children are not meant to have important dreams. They are meant to go to stores, and like stores.

Her name was Delilah. She sat in the playground, dangling her legs off the swing. She wondered, if she swung hard enough on it, would she fly through the air, far enough to escape the grips of usualness? But the others did not think like that. They thought Mary likes Tom. Mary likes Tom because he is good at football. Tom likes Mary. Tom likes Mary because she is pretty. They are happy. Broken thoughts flittered in her mind, little butterflies with wings of paper, decorated with ink. Their bodies were silver, made out of tinsel. They flew in graceful patterns, making lights in the sky of her mind. She heard a giggle, a proper giggle, a giggle of a proper girl. One who would be a proper woman soon, and then a proper wife, and a proper mother. Delilah ignored her, biting back a smile. How would they giggle, if they knew the truth about her? That her mind was the cosmos, her eyes a gateway to the sky? But she was innocent; all children think the world revolves around them. Until they realise. Tom goes to work. He is happy. Mary is a good mother. She cooks. She is happy. They settle into happy routines, cheerfully going on about their business. Delilah knew that she would never be like that, and she bottled up this thought, letting it keep her company. She was happy, seeing the world through the eyes of perhaps a greater force than of any other in the world. She paid no attention to the other children, who laughed behind their hands at the girl on the lonely swing.

Her name is Delilah. Life has been good to her, so far. She counts herself lucky. Life is a gift given to the fortunate. Her mind may last forever, now. Now that it is on paper. Her beautiful paper-tinsel butterflies swoop and flitter in cerulean skies, with purple-pink blossoms under the great expanse of the heavens. But now – hah! Experience has added to her paintings, giving shape to what she could never image. There is beauty in the abstract, and Delilah knows , when she steps down from her canvas, that this isn’t right. This is not normal, not synchronised. And it’s perfect in its imperfections. All down on paper, eager, reaching out to the viewer. To last for many generations. Many asked how she was able to draw in such a way, to take the universe and force it onto paper. To be able to draw such innocence, while she herself had lived in such bad conditions. The newspapers whispered words like father, brutal, corrupted, but Delilah ignored it. She knew that they would never see it like she did, the girl with the cosmos in her eyes. Her story was a long one, but it was simply a list of re-runs.

She knew that life was a circle, where folk simply spun around until their luck ran out. But she was not folk, and no wheel would hold her. No world could hold her. But she would hold her crushed and cracked dreams to her chest, hold them away from the world. Because she is Delilah Thompson, the girl with the cosmos in her eyes.