forevermore

It enters his body with the same ease as a paintbrush dusting its bristles in its palette.

The painter dips into him and withdraws, and, across the sky, it streaks red through the stars. It starts as a bright crimson and dulls as it continues, retreating into the darkness surrounding them.

In an elegy, one would claim the streak as a perfect arch, a gateway opening only to collapse in on itself with the weight of gravity.

In reality, the bullet paints with reckless abandon, exploding it outwards, and it dots her face once, twice, thrice.

Once, a fingerprint between her eyes, slipping into her left iris and blinding her.

Twice, a swipe across her cheek, a blurred dash trying to race away from her.

Thrice, a smudge in her lipstick, a red enfolding itself into her breath.

The canvas—he—will take a step towards her, every muscle primed to keep moving, to keep walking. He will take a step towards the sanctuary of her eyes, the brown of the melted chocolate chips of their youth; and towards the sanctum of her lips, the pink of the rattle of their youth reproduced.

Then, he will start to fall, and she will not move forward, she cannot move forward, she can move only inward.

Her heart will move inward, peeking out between her ribs like a child staring between their fingers. She will press her arms over her chest, trying to add one more layer of armor, one more metallic way to keep herself safe, and she will crumble.

In a requiem, one would claim she shrieked, a sound so ravaged by devastation all creation ceases to be if only for a second.

In reality, she will squeak, a weak and wet sound, somewhere caught between a cry of a child and a sob of a widow, both and neither all at once.

He will hit the ground, face-first, and she will hit the ground, knees-first. His breathing will hitch, only once. Her squeak will turn into a shudder into a sob into a pure sound, too long to be a scream but too short to be a prayer.

His eyes will turn vacant, glassy, undefined.

He will try to say her name.

He will be gone.

(He will be gone forevermore.)

The paint will spread around him, starting first with a quick dip in the cache of color unfolding over his heart. The tip of the brush will be delicate at first. The trembling of the hairs will produce the delicate rose petals, but the petals will want more, they always want more, and then the red will splash outwards with reckless abandon, destroying the garden from whence it came. The paint will dry into something harder, less fragile, and when she folds her hands over the rose to breathe life back in, she will pull them away blackened.

Now, the paint will stretch around his torso, the light strokes of feathers. The wings will grow and grow, the length of a butterfly transformed into a bird transformed into something humanoid and inhumane all at once. The substance of the paint will be too runny, but she will not be able to stop it.

In the coming minutes, the night sky will collapse around her, the black swallowed up by that insistent shade of red, and a new color will be forced to the canvas, a whirling blue of a siren. The faceless men—men with their hats pulled low and lips twisted into false sympathy and skin marred with the falsities of their words—will pull her away from him to coax her into action once more.

“I’m sorry,” they will say.

“Time heals all wounds,” they will say.

Time will regain its relentless pace.

She will trade her rose-stained clothes to take the black; she will wear the dress like a suit of armor and her golden ring as a shield. At the funeral, she will allow them only the vacant, glassy, undefined look in her eyes.

In a tragedy, she will never paint again. She will swear off the brushes and the palettes and the canvases.

In reality, time will trudge on, and it will do so with an arm laid across her shoulders like an old friend, for time can be as kind as it is cruel.

Her armor will wear thin around the middle, a tight embrace against her skin, and a second heartbeat will begin to rattle the metal. She will laugh, her giggle barely more than a squeak, and she will cry and cry and cry.

She will wish time stops for only a moment.

Then, she will trade her armor for an apron and get to work.

In the nursery, she will paint flowers clustered close to the ground, and she will tangle their childhoods—stuttering, awkward first dates; spilled coffee; the first time she met the disappointment in his mother’s eyes with a silent challenge—amongst its roots.

(She will not paint roses. She will never look upon roses again.)

In the nursery, she will paint birds perched into the trees, ready to take flight for the first time with their outstretched wings, and she will weave their hopes—the time he fell to one knee to offer a promise to her; the time he reached for her and shared her breathing; the time he loved her—into the feathers.

In the nursery, she will paint the night sky, its stars mournful and celebratory all at once.

She will love again as she stares into eyes the same brown as melted chocolate chips and little fingers wrapped around a pink rattle.

Right now, she will not love.

Right now, there is only her and her triangle of bloodied freckles splattered across her face as he stumbles towards her.

There is a masterpiece of red unspooling in time with the unspooling of her love.