-A short story
This is how I used to spell four.
I used to be convinced ‘best’ was written as ‘beast’.
These were my first friends at home.
We were all making silly faces back then.
She directed her words towards me with such fluidity, such freedom and ease. With rawness and simplicity, simultaneously blunt and emotional.
She spoke to me like she had nothing to lose and nothing to gain.
We leafed through a scrappy leather notebook, vibrantly bulging with memories printed in 2D.
We stopped at a few and searched for the little girl with bangs and a red headband. The girl in dark blue shorts and a white polo shirt, already stained with patches of soil. You see the child with no front teeth?
She’s the one.
A few years later, she was playing charades with Clara, Edith, and Arthur.
We laughed our heads off while Edith pretended to be dumb as a rock when, really, she was sly as a fox… Slowing the game down would obviously buy us more time together.
This was the last she saw or heard of her cheeky childhood companions.
The next day, she left without a word and forgot about them.
Then we were sitting right there, taller, our facial features sharper and more defined, our eyes cat-like in the dark night. We settled at the edge of the empty pool and let our feet dangle into the void.
The tone of her voice casually drifted from a bold, hot summer day to a cozy, nostalgically passionate autumn afternoon. A cold, harsh, grim winter; then a new, emerging spring.
Her pitch rose and lowered like the tide. Her pace was strangely rhythmically conversational. Sometimes, she got so excited and ended up tangled in her own words. She told me about her family. Her love was so sincere that it seemed to be radiating from her fingertips, I could almost feel the actual warmth. I had no words. I only beamed at the lovely person before me.
Soon after, she sprung up and ran inside to fetch a deep mossy green pencil case. Thrilled, she clumsily descended into the large empty pool, her sneakers smearing footprints on the pale blue fiberglass. Then she settled down, crossed her legs, and took out a paintbrush.
I watched her struggle, thinking furiously, racking her brain to figure out how to materialize the idea she had in mind. Then, her eyebrows raised in surprise, her jaw dropped, and her eyes opened wide. Eureka!
Her lips twisted into a smile. She tied her hair up and got to work.
We burned the midnight oil,
sketching, wiping out, painting, and outlining. We welcomed the first golden rays of the sun, creeping up our arms to radiate our faces. The birds slashed through the morning sky like comments at dawn, what show-offs!
Finally, she looked up at me, paint stripped over her cheeks and hands. I leaned over the edge of the pool and peered at the artwork… then I stood rooted to the spot and gazed.
We had painted a huge blue whale on the once painfully blank pool floor. The mammal was a giant. Its smooth skin on top was a shade of midnight blue and at the bottom a deep, immersive charcoal blue. White spots ornamented its large, powerful head, branching out to reach its broad fins. Dense, coiled seaweed surrounded the whale, and though such a colossal animal did not look like it was in need of shelter, the plants appeared to be protecting the whale, nurturing the creature.
A myriad of fish lived in the underwater forest. The fish were ephemeral coming and leaving, yet the sea animals were at peace, aware that this was all nature’s routine. The ecosystem was in perfect balance and harmony.
I grinned,
“That’s all you’ve got?” I asked.
After all, I had every right to challenge myself
She is me, and I was her.
Yorumlar