Spoiler! :
I tried painting yesterday,
forced myself to see
him, dotting drops of color, attempting
to capture a certain periwinkle blue,
love me not flowers that were pressed into textbooks by
me, that dried up wilted color that looked so much like his eyes.
but he had the longest eyelashes and
I remember eskimo kisses in the winter. I
stopped painting for a second, laughing, smiling,
caring as I recalled how red his cheeks were
after coming in from shoveling the snow or after
we were alone for too long. The brush was thick and the paint
hit the canvas in just the right way, exactly
six point two ounces of acrylic, cans of it are Fed-Exed every two
months. I kept thinking of the thousands of moments when
we laughed & yelled & kissed & I tried to imagine what his expressions
were back then. I know he was
beautiful, far too beautiful, with thousands of imperfections
and flaws, but never any
tragic mistakes, only tiny things that made him human
like the freckle he had above his eyebrow and the
star shaped scar he had on his chin from childhood days when he
crossed the street without looking both ways and two cars swerved out of the way, broke apart like
lovers to make sure the worst that could happen to him was a fall on gravel and concrete, blinding fear
and a short trip to the hospital for
stitches. I finished white, the tube rolled up like empty toothpaste and went down to the basement, found the
can in the back corner on the shelf, the
only one there and I remembered I never took the shipped boxes inside after he left, reminded myself to
do just that as soon as I finished the left side of his face,
so I went back upstairs and painted for five hours, until the light bled from the sky and I awarded myself a
much needed break. I pulled open the rickety, rusty door and walked outside,
for just a moment, to grab the boxes, but I felt Winter's love on my bare feet and
a serene thought went through my mind: i should paint out here. I
wound up painting on the porch in my lilac pajamas and bare feet.
that moment, right there,
was beautiful and I was almost done,
on his chin, using a very light peach color to paint
the star scar he was always so insecure about. I said: you're beautiful on the
inside and the outside and sometimes
i wonder why you even bother with a silly girl like me. I
forgot what he said in return but it made me laugh
and slap his shoulder. I bit my lip and then we were quiet. I
tried hard not to say a word, disrupt the peace and I closed my eyes, tried
to keep that second imprinted in my memory forever. Yesterday, I tried to
make a soft stroke for his jaw, but the paint on my palate was all blended, a messy portrait of what I do for
him It was done, his face and I began on his hair but I had to get a picture because I always
forget the exact hue of it on December nights. He was grinning and I was
too but I don't remember who took the picture, it might have been Her
but I think that was before we met her, before she came and ruined everything, before
he told me truths that I swore were lies about what love really is and soul mates and forever, before I
was devastated because everything he said opened up highways in my mind that were
always there but I refused to see, refused to drive down. At that point, the painting became angry, became
hers, and I realized it was always hers
I
was
just
borrowing.
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