white piece of chalk between his fingers. He had the gift of charisma too;
I fought the thought off with a shiver. I recognized the proud sense of
completion in his inflated chest, and realized that I envied him.
I fought my way out of the gawking audience and increased my
pace as I turned away from the “Box.”
While I walked I thought, I could do better.
The art supply store was a block away from my room, but in the
seven years that I lived there I’d avoided it like a terminal illness. When I
reached the small door, I hesitated a moment, taking a breath that I didn’t
know I still needed after all those years. Stepping inside the shop was
like taking a step back in time to a world of colors that I forgot existed, a
world of smells I forgot I knew, a world of emotions I forgot I felt. I was
home, and the weight that had been building on my shoulders since I was
thirteen began to melt away. Of course, I thought, it wasn’t art that had
ruined me.
“Can I help you with anything?” the old woman behind the register
asked carefully. I realized that I had stopped in the middle of the store,
and that a tear had escaped down my cheek. I smiled as I wiped it away.
“Where do you keep the pastels?”
She pointed behind her to aisle four and I made my way there
slowly, letting a stupid smile paint my face as my gaze caressed the oncefamiliar tools that he had taught me to use. I ached to feel the weight of
each and every one in my new, larger hands.
I spent a good ten minutes in front of the pastels. With each color
came a memory that I had tried to lock away years ago.
Violet: my elephant mug.
Navy: the comforter.
Olive: the painting I ruined.
Scarlet: the blood I washed from between my legs in his small
bathroom.
Orange: the jumpsuit he wore for a month before he finished
his possession sentence and skipped town. I wondered if the sick fuck
thought about me as much as I thought about him, about my stolen
childhood. That’s when I knew the years of silence were finally coming to
an end.
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