Colour Me In You

The hardest thing to do is to say hello. To watch the world spin for a moment, and to know that the beginning of this moment, would soon become a silence. Hello is the gods moving the stars across the sky, connecting the dots into shapes, forming the stories we tell our children at night.

Hello is always the beginning of the end.

While I had known the man before me, for so long, I could never be sure when it was that I had met him. A question trickled about my brain; can you know a man whom you do not love? Can you truly know him? Is it enough to know that he walks by each morning and shares a smile? Does that mean you’ve met?

I am left to believe that I did not know him until I had known love. The exact moment of this, I could never be sure. However, I knew it was on this day. The dark eyes before me deepened and opened; a whole galaxy where I swam amongst the glints and flecks of his gaze.

“Is this where you live?” his voice skipped off into the sound of hushing trees. I hid behind one of these trees and peeked out shyly. He took a few uncertain steps closer.

My hand swept down into the coloured paste, the same colour that his skin radiated. Wilfully, I painted a line onto each of my cheeks and stood blushing. I was burning underneath the colour I knew to be his. Hesitancy, like a mist, drifted around us as his brows drew together.

I picked up a second world of colour, one to match my own, and handed it to him. He took the world tentatively and there we stood. His colour on my cheeks and my colour waiting in his hand. We both knew this position well; I could tell by the connecting flecks in his eyes.

But it was late. We both stood with breath held. The surrounding trees were laughing at us in a blurry giggle of spinning black and grey leaves. I could feel droplets dripping down my cheeks, as if a colour could shed a tear. The paste knew I would not wish to cry by myself. Not in front of the handsome stranger.

“Would you come with me,” he put the paste down on the grass, “I have something I can show you.” He did not know. He did not know what shame I felt. As if I had stood naked before him, offering myself as some kind of prize. Words would fail me if I ever opened my lips for him.

I couldn’t wipe the paste from my cheeks. I walked by his side that day, pretending that he had returned my silly gesture. I liked to pretend that he had understood. So, every step I took, I moved further into this impression. Yes, this stranger would wear the same streak of affection - like a badge - if I looked to him close enough.

Eventually I stood by a clear patch in his wall. He had taken me into a room of zigzagging floors. Giant metal boxes growled and hissed outside. Eccentrically shaped trees, each with a singular star-bright leaf, led us to his home. Yet I was still inside the forest in my mind.

He pressed a damp cloth across my cheeks. “I think I know something you will like.” I watched his lips closely as he wrung the cloth out over a tiny circler pond. The clearest and smallest of ponds I had ever seen. “Can you tell me your name?” He asked.

I noticed how the trickling drops had turned his pond murky. My fingers dove in. I tried desperately to pull the dirt out. I splashed water across his beige grass. My mouth hung open like a horrified child finding their first steed dead from winter’s bite.

His reached out soothingly; his fingers circled my wrist.

“It’s okay,” he said.

I turned from him and heard a crumpling sound. A large snow-white shape looked back up at me, now with a set of toe prints on its edge. He stepped around it and handed me a soft ended twig. I frowned at it, the hazy mist of hesitation finding its way back to us.

He presented his own soft ended twig and dipped it into the pink of a beetle’s wing. The wing was like a lady bug’s back, and inside each black polka-dot was a pool of coloured paste. Pink, Blue, Yellow, Red – every colour had its own spot.

Together we turned the white shape into a rainbow. I laughed as we swung our dreams across the surface. I was mesmerised by the pattern of his hand now smeared with colour. His steady fingers so perfectly connected to the task. He laughed as well.

“Hello.”

I chose this moment to speak my strongest word.

His lips curled at me. “Hello.”

“Come outside with me.” He stood and reached out to take my hand. We moved down the zigzagging grounds once again. I frowned at him. It was cold and wet outside. Pelting drops of water fell from the sky. The air was hard and confronting.

Into the storm where the growling and hissing surrounded us- we held each other’s hands and spun. Around we went, laughing and spinning in a wet stormy mess. Grey and black blurs to the world outside, and between us, just a rainbow of connection. A single trip of my toe against a rock and we fell to the mud together.

Between giggles, and my spinning vision, the stranger paused to wipe the rain from his face. His fingers rubbed and smeared brilliant colours across his cheeks. He did not know. I touched my own cheek as the rain washed the colour away from his. It ran like tears I could never shed. I closed my eyes to experience the full sensation of happiness in my body.

I think this is when we met.

I think this is when we truly met.

But I could never be sure.