"The best stories are not told through words, but with your eyes." - Kai York

"You are going to be okay. You are...despite the way the world has failed to protect the tenderness that you are, despite the way it has clawed at the light within, despite the pain, despite the ache, despite all that has conspired to weigh down the soul of you - you are still here...Something deep inside of you kept going...something deep inside of you always will. Trust in that." - Bianca Sparacino

Some days she's dark; some days she's light. No matter what, she's always true; she's always her - that you can trust. Her soul is dark with shimmers light, her heart black stained with crimson tears, her mind shattered but always sense. She holds madness in one hand and peace in the other, each as much a part of her as her smile, or tears, or eyes that look through your soul. She can hide with the best of them, assumptions and impressions all the world once knew of her, until she chose to share herself, and in her vulnerability let slip too much, the truth behind the mask now seen: The love behind the distance, empathy behind the cold, pain behind the indifference, an aching beyond the loneliness that she rarely sets free. There is a soul unlike any other, an oxymoron complete, for she is as she is not, a complexity few will - if ever - understand. Both woman and girl, enlightened though innocent and anything but, a soul forever young even as it has lived lifetimes; a Gemini is she, but so much more than can ever be explained by words. She just simply is and will always be. Me.

Words: © Rosie Chee

Photographer: Tony Mitchell

"Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain..." - Bob Dylan

I love you. Seems the easiest thing for us to say. It is everything else. Everything that comes after that is hard. That seems to get stuck. Caught in the silence after. I love you. Is not the hardest thing for us to say. Not any more. Not to each other. It is everything else. Everything we silently wish for. The dreams we hold in our heart that we barely let ourselves dare hope for. Those are the hardest things. Those are the words that get caught. Maybe we think that if we dare utter them it will curse this love that we have. This love that once even we could not admit. To each other. Though everyone else who knew us already knew. That we loved. Why is it that the things we want the most are the hardest of all to say out loud? Why do we stop our lips from uttering what we show each other with in things other than words? Do we wish for it so much? Are we so scared to lose what has become the most precious to us? How can that be? Because once even the love we share we dared not even allow ourselves to have as a dream. But it happened. Yes it did. It exists as much as we do. As alive as we are. Growing as much as we do. Becoming only stronger with every day that we let it live. I love you. When did they stop becoming the hardest words to say?

Words: © 2019 Rosie Chee

Photographer (Raw Image): Tony Mitchell

In a world of free and easy sex, don't you dare for one moment think that she is like all the rest. For her to have sexual attraction to someone is rare, let alone real sexual connection and compatibility [in such physical intimacy]. So if she has with you, know that you are one of less than a few in this lifetime she has ever desired, one of even rarer whom she has allowed herself to be completely vulnerable [naked without armour]. Only one other in this world has she ever felt that safety with. I hope you comprehend just what that means [to her].

Words: © 2019 Rosie Chee

Photographer: Tony Mitchell

Beauty and pain go hand-in-hand. Like happiness and vulnerability. Live life unexpected but full of promise. Let the world see your wings, fragile as they might sometimes feel, for they have strength you yet do not know. Keep your heart, because even breaking means you feel, and if you do not feel you cannot truly live. I have learned this. Let what might break you make you. Exquisite pleasure plunged into darkness. Yet even in darkness there is light and that is where it shines the brightest. Where you do; turning tragedy into triumph, ashes into diamonds, soul finally truly free.


Words: © Rosie Chee​

Photographer: Tony Mitchell

Beauty revealed in the pain expressed through solace of art as tormented heart seeks voice for what yet cannot be spoken. The way of perception vastly altered through eyes that scream emotion barely conceived by those who see nothing but surface. Assumption of being no stranger to soul so often misunderstood in a world condemning of difference. Vulnerability exposed in rare glimpse of self that causes step back to process such rawness of feeling. When words are inadequate to touch the depths being transformed by experience allowing illumination of beauty.


Words: © 2018 Rosie Chee

Photographer: Carley Patmythes; MUA: Judy Trout

It is not always going to be easy. You are going to love, and you are going to hurt. But it does not end there. Your story does not end with the pain, or the heartache, or the loss. That is only another beginning. Another beginning of learning to let go, of understanding that not everything and everyone you love is meant to last your lifetime. Every love has a lifetime in our own, even if it is brief, and each one changes us in ways we might never have imagined before we lived it. We have to remind ourselves to remember the love and the beauty of it, for it was real to us, and that means something. But we have to make ourselves leave it alone when it is time to go, for if we do not, then we only hurt ourselves. And ultimately, love is not meant to hurt, but to help us change and grow and bloom into more than we are. That is what we have to remember. That we do not have to always be hard, and that sometimes it is our vulnerability that first allows us those most precious moments of beauty. It is in our softness that we learn to love, when we take off our armour and let ourselves be seen for the soul within. And those who truly cherish that soul will not seek to break it, but encourage the strength within to be the light that seeps out, so that armour no longer needs to be worn.

© 2017 Rosie Chee​

Photographer: Carley Patmythes

Do you understand

that you feel like a starting

over point for me?

Haiku © 2017 Rosie Chee

Art by: Aaron Griffin