Sleeping Beauty
They called her Sleeping Beauty, but not because she slept.
In fact, she hardly ever did.
She walked through the world with a soft smile, eyes like the calm before a storm. Her voice was gentle, her presence quiet — almost too quiet, like a forgotten song you only remember in dreams. People said she had a peaceful soul. That she was graceful. That she must live a perfect life.
But what they didn’t see was what she carried.
Every day, she woke before the sun, before the birds, before the world had a chance to ask anything of her. In the quiet hours, when no one was watching, she let herself feel the weight she couldn’t show. Grief. Sorrow. Memories that clung to her like shadows.
She had lost someone once. Someone who had loved her more than the world ever would. A sister. A twin flame. A mirror.
No one knew. Not really. They knew someone had died, yes — people always talk in small towns — but they didn’t know how much of Sleeping Beauty had been buried that day too.
She never spoke of it.
Instead, she wore long sleeves in summer and smiled at strangers in the market. She helped elderly neighbors carry groceries, read poetry in the park, and drank her tea slowly, as if time moved differently for her.
But at night — when the world dimmed — she became her truest self.
She would sit by the window, stare into the stars, and speak aloud to the one who was gone. Only then did she cry. Only then did she allow the ache in her chest to rise up like a tide that had waited all day to crash.
She carried her grief on her shoulders like a queen wears her crown — quietly, with dignity, for no one to see.
And still, she was kind.
Still, she gave the world what little light she had left.
Because even though she lived in silence, even though sorrow stitched itself into every step she took, she had made a choice:
To keep going.
To keep loving.
To be beauty in a world that forgets how to see.
And so, the name stayed — Sleeping Beauty — not because she was asleep, but because her pain lived in the part of her no one could wake.
And maybe, just maybe, that was her secret kind of strength.
Acrylic painting on paper
50x65 cm
