On the way home today, I was struck with an opening and title, and as I thought on it, it evolved into a story, tragic, beautiful, and weird. Here it is.
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We who paint the trees, the leaves, the single hairs on spider legs, are often better off alone. Single-mindedly, we trail our brushes along the sunlight streams to fill the world with light. You do not see us, but you see our signature and appreciate it all the same; we, the glimmer in your eye; we that shade the bitten kisses on your neck; we who can never love like you. A pity, for we see all you love and give it colour, love it too.
We love the world we paint, and those of us who wish they weren't alone love some things more than others. Some paint the rain at night in dazzling blues, stretch streetlights just a bit to colour someone with safety, bring a message to life with a buzz and a flashing light. And I who wait for the singing prince spend my mornings waking roses as I ask them for their thorns. I hold them for the day and return them when the prince leaves again---though he cannot see me I know he sees my work; the bed of flowers he lies on replenishes with every visit, the thorns borrowed, the stems never broken. He comes back with a smile every day. I paint that, too.
Two days go by without the prince and I paint longest vines along the trees, paint the now-cracked windows of the cabin by the field, paint the rain that falls in sheets toward the ground. On the third, I think of painting the prince though he isn't here, wonder if my brush can bring him somewhere he's not, but I wait another day. In the evening of the fourth he comes, and I paint his smile, tousled hair, paint his hand holding another, a companion he has brought to the field. I return half the thorns I borrowed to spite this new companion; though he has my eyes, my hair, he has the prince that should be mine. The thorns push him onto the prince, into playfulness---and more. I paint this too.
I lose weeks painting the prince and his love-who-is-not-me, hear everything they say to each other in whispered tones and grand declarations, even if I only listen to the prince. The water for my brush runs out and I begin to use my tears, even as the others I knew slowly fade without their water, replaced by new painters, I stay. I stay here for the prince, because I know no other could paint the prince as well as I could---or if they could, that would mean they loved him too, and that would be worse. The prince returns one night alone, with a frown, and practices a speech I refuse to hear. This one speech that will tear him away from me for good. But I paint this, too.
The next morning he returns with the sunrise, and I almost don't see his love-who-is-not-me following shortly behind him, blindfolded. They kiss, they laugh, and I quickly borrow the thorns, though I have no time to wake up the roses they will know. The roses will understand. I watch the prince and his love-who-is-not-me turn serious as the prince kneels. He starts the speech I refused to hear and fishes in his pocket for a ring that he thinks he finds, but I do not paint it. I do not paint the sharp diamonds, or engraving, I paint a letter that wasn't there. I paint words with lurid details of someone else who is not real, of all the things I wished I had done with the prince shaped like the confession of a man who has done them, and I paint the love-who-is-no-longer-his-love's hand as it strikes the prince on the cheek. He lies in the thornless rosebush as he cries and his cheek blues. I paint that, too.
Exactly one week later, the prince speaks to me. He curses, he yells, he screams, and he pummels the ground. And when he looks at the letter again, I repaint it. My confession brings tears to his eyes, and I have hope for the short moment until he tears the letter in tiny shreds that drift to the ground. I do not paint them. I do not paint the fists he hurls in every direction, or his tears over his love-who-is-no-longer-his-love, or the dirt on his knees as he falls to the ground. I wait.
And as he promises to never come back, I paint a dagger, flying through the air.
I paint the deep wound it creates in his chest. I borrow the roses' thorns, and I paint the rain in green. I paint a new slash across his chest, a new cut in his arms, a new scar on his face, a new stream of blood from his leg, and I paint his teeth grinding, his fingernails breaking his own skin.
I paint the trail of blood to the cabin, the print on the door, and the soaking wood. I paint the cut phone lines, and the white bedsheets, waiting for him. I paint the key turning in the lock.
And I paint the deep incision in his chest, the beating heart splattering and spluttering all over the walls, coming to me. I don't have to paint myself, the blood does it for me, as I hold in my hands what I always wanted.
The love-who-will-never-be-the-prince's-love returns to the field with flowers that I do not paint, calling out for the prince, asking why he disappeared. He follows the trail of roses into the cabin and when he finds the prince, he falls backwards, down the hill, faster, and faster, and faster towards the jagged, jutting rocks by the beach, already red from the setting sun.
I paint this, too.
Topic: We Who Paint The Trees (Read 1692 times)