By O. Deng, TIWP Student

I see beauty in imperfection: my uneven brows, the floppy swirls of my frozen yogurt, the flecks of burnt candle wick that fall into my candle wax, the way my sheets fold delicately into random shapes when I don’t make my bed, and the messiness of my room during the weekday, 

I see beauty in the conventionally beautiful: the crisp towels that greet you when you walk into a hotel room, a perfectly green matcha latte, the satisfying symmetry of a butterfly, the quiet shine of a spotless mirror, and neat rows of books on a shelf.

I see beauty in the in-between: the way sunlight lands unevenly across the floor in the afternoon, the slightly crooked line of icing on a homemade cake, the soft hum of a room that’s been lived in all day.

Sometimes beauty is careful and intentional, pressed, and polished.


Sometimes it’s accidental—spilled, scattered, unfinished. And somehow, both feel like small proofs that life is happening exactly as it should.