You held tightly to opportunity. You begged her to stay but she refused and slipped through your hands and left, leaving behind her rainbow-tinted scarf in your hands.

Keep that souvenir. Keep those lessons. One day in looking for that missed opportunity, you will need to show that scarf to people. You will meet someone who knows the owner of that scarf and where she lives. That scarf is a guide, those lessons a compass. If you find her, she will look much prettier than you last saw her.

But if she has crossed oceans into a land you’ve never seen, a land you’ve never been, courage. Do not despair.

In the long search for her, it will suddenly dawn on you that it was your very self you’ve been searching, the piece of you that requires risking separating yourself from family, friends, certain religious teachings and conventional ideologies in order to find.

Those are deep waters. Risky heights and sticky grounds. You discover that the taboo everyone avoids looking at, it is your destiny to gaze at, touch and carry that taboo around for others to see the beauty they’ve been missing.