The hardest thing to do is to begin with goodbye. To watch the world spin for only a moment, and to know, that the beginning of this moment, would soon become a silence, a stillness. Love is always the end.
While I had known the man before me, for so long, I could never be sure when it was that I met him. The question always arose; can you know a man whom you do not love? Truly know a man? I am left to believe that I did not know him until I had known love, and when that was, I could never be sure. He had never loved me. I never loved him, until I grew to know love. By that time, he had already left.
"What are you doing?" his voice skipped off into the sound of the hushing trees. However, I was not able to reply. My hand swept down into the coloured paste, the same colour that his skin radiated. Willingly, I traced a line of this paste onto either side of my face. My cheeks blushing, burning underneath the colour I knew to be his, and all he could do, was watch in confusion.
I picked up a second world of colour, one to match my own, and handed it to him. He took the world hesitantly and we simply stood there. His colour on my cheeks and my colour waiting in his hand, we both knew this position well, even though we had never held this stance before. He wasn't going to trace the paste over his cheeks.
It was dawn, and we both stood with breath held, in the middle of a forest far from home. I could feel dark droplets dripping down my cheeks, as if a colour could shed a tear, knowing I would not wish to cry for myself. And still, he stood; blank faced and confused, holding my world in his hands and never accepting the world as his own.
"Come on, it's too messy," he put the paste down on the grass, "we're nowhere near soap, and look at you!" He did not know. He did not know what shame I felt, as if I had stood naked before him and offered myself as a prize, yet he did not know.
"it was a silly game anyway." I didn't wipe the paste off my face still; I walked by his side that day, pretending all the while that he had returned my silly gesture and understood. Could it be wrong to pretend this? I wanted to ask someone, but the only one there was him, and he wasn't even there.
Now, I stood by a window. So much had changed, and somehow nothing had changed at the same time. A stranger had taken me into a room of zigzagging floors, giant metal boxes growled and hissed outside, waiting for me to join them. Yet I was still inside that forest. While my face presented clean, I could still feel the crying colour on my cheeks.
"this wasn't meant to happen," the stranger smiled at me, "I'm sorry about all the stairs, there was just not other place to do this picture." He laughed as if he was brand new, as if he had never been scorned, "sorry, I forgot to ask, what is your name?"
"Does it matter? We're just painting a picture and then I'll probably never see you again." He lifted his eyebrows at me in shock.
