HOME | DD

Description
All you ever wanted was peace.
At least in your brain. Some peace, silence and blankness.

You assumed you needed to live in comfort, warmth surrounding you and silence accompanying your thoughts. You thought you had to get off everything and slow your pace, act lazy.
You thought you needed some rest. But you endlessly realized that you actually didn't need rest; you weren't one for laziness, silence and comfort. You never liked it. You believed in the bent of the soul and you knew you didn't belong to that kind of peace.

You spent three hundreds and sixty-five days of your existence working in a bookstore. No, scratch that.
You never worked, in the real sense of the word, there. All you could remember was some kind of incredible placidity which overwhelmed you and numbed you; work wasn't there. Yours, was more of a supporting presence than an help for your mate, but she seemed to be happy like that. You used to only read all the time, sometimes stopping to wrap a gift-book in a soft blue paper for random customers; your mate said your fingers were so gracious when they danced and packed the presents, so, maybe, that's why she always left that to you.

That soft creamy color you found so comfortable was on the walls and between the pages of the books you read.
You read a lot; you came to the conclusion that, after three hundreds and sixty-five days of your existence spent in a bookstore, you read enough stuff to be able to compare yourself to a literature graduate. Flaunting your culture to the world had never been in your plans, though, so you were satisfied just with sinking in the dark green armchair while skimming through the black words of this or that author. By the last days of your permanence in what you came to title 'your creamy nest', you became able to advise customers on what would be the best choice for their reading; they told themselves in ten words, and you answered them with a title. It was simple and somehow satisfying, and they seemed to be happy of your suggestions.

You didn't seem to think so much about how you got paid for practically doing nothing, seven hours a day. Your mate didn't mind, so it had to be right. Maybe, you were supposed to be like that.

She didn't know that you, in reality, did think about that. Endlessly, you dared to ask for a bit more consideration, you offered a bit more help, but she seemed on the verge of physically pushing you back on the plush green armchair. You were too pale, thin and weak to work, she said. 'Too beautiful to waste yourself in trivial activities', she even added, but you never heard her. You only heard – or thought you heard – pity and distance.
You decided that you had already read all the books you wanted to, that you had already satisfied all your possible curiosities, and that you didn't have anything to do there anymore. You stepped out of your creamy nest for the last time after three hundreds and sixty-five days, politely chanting goodbye to your mate for you didn't like the sound of 'farewell', before you flew away.

Evidently, that kind of 'peace' didn't fit you.

You finally realized that it was your brain which needed peace. Silence was never something you liked – you used to hum your own melodies when the bookstore was too quiet – and comfort tired you. You still sought peace, but in your own way. Your peace was music and action. Your peace was having your brain light and empty. Your peace was having no thoughts and no worries: if necessary, no feelings, even.

Slowly, you realized that your mate in the bookstore was right: you were too pale, thin and weak. You came to the point where you highly doubted your strength to finally find your peace and you began giving up. You cut your auburn curls because you didn't like how they reminded you of freedom, and you began wearing blackness, hoping to find some peace in shadows.

You didn't.

Memories of the books you used to read populated your mind. In particular, you loved those ones about Art. You read all the most famous artists' biographies – some of them even twice – and you grew up your own discreet culture in the area. Your favorite period was Renaissance; Michelangelo was your favorite artist.
If someone asked you why you was so fond of that, you wouldn't have been able to explain. You would have stuttered and rambled about beauty and perfection and emotions; you would have wandered around so many arguments that, in the end, you only would have had in front of you a confused interlocutor, while your first aim was to have a satisfied one.
You remembered The Little Prince saying during one of your trips through the books' pages: "…a house, the stars, the desert or whatever, what makes them beautiful is invisible", and you couldn't give it a name.

***

When you first met him, he didn't ask anything about that.
He never asked you anything about that. He simply accepted the fact that you two had something in common: you both loved Art.

Apart from that, he was completely different from you; he was even different from your mate at the bookstore. He was tanned, muscular and strong. His voice was warm and soft, never pitiful nor distant. He didn't like 'peace' and he always laughed when silence settled in, just so he didn't have to deal with embarrassment.

Gradually, as you learned how to live with each other, you taught him that silence is good sometimes. You had learned it in the bookstore, and felt quite the wise one stating it. You almost never liked silence as well, but you knew it was good, once in a while. When you didn't laugh, nor hummed melodies, you used to stare at each other, silently; neither of you was surprised with the fact that the usual blush was beginning to fade the longer your silences were.

In exchange of your lessons, he taught you how to relate to Art: you didn't know it for you always stared at the subject passively, he said.

He was a real artist: his golden skin and his strong muscles came from his sculpting sessions under the sun.
He loved to sculpt under the sun, he said. Sunrays made the marble shine and resemble the alabaster skin of angels. 'Your alabaster skin', he then added in his mind, but you never heard him, just like it happened with your mate in the bookstore.

He used to sculpt mythological gods and ethereal figures, and you always failed in distinguishing them from the images you stared at in your books. He, instead, said they weren't as perfect as you stated, trying to make you notice the wrong way the muscle of this nymph's hand's back came out or the scratch the marble had on that other god's left foot's toes. You never noticed, and you never would.

Your auburn curls began growing back, and you didn't cut them. He said you didn't have to.
He made you pose for him: he wanted you as a model for his seraph. Your features are now everlasting in your town's cathedral: you're the one with six wings stretching graciously behind your back and the biggest, most expressive eyes a sculpture has ever had.

Once, you asked him why he never painted. He said he was afraid. And that was the first and only time you ever thought about him in that way. An artist could never be afraid, you stated out loud. He laughed, this time without wanting to cover embarrassment, and took your hand in his.

***

You realized you found your peace the second you dipped your fingers in the Red.

He had chosen the Blue and was dragging his index and middle finger along the white canvas in round courses. His lower lip was being tortured between his pearl teeth as he strained to fathom a sense in his creation.

You would have never known how long you stared at what you had slowly acknowledged as the best masterpiece The Artist above heavens could mold. You could now relate actively to Art, like he wanted you to.

When your fingers finally grazed the cloth, he was half-way through a dove. You didn't even know if your colored thumb had really meant to stain its white feathers with the Red, seemingly making the animal bleed. "Just to add some reality", you tried to justify, but you weren't sure if he actually heard you. You were never able to make others listen when you said something you weren't convinced of.

He didn't seem to be mad, anyway, because his painted hand quickly came in contact with yours.
Purple began forming and overflowing from your entwined fingers in the middle of the half-blank canvas.

You had no doubts you had found your peace when he began humming and you began laughing, both of you eventually silencing the other with the quickest kiss.

The creamy nest was far and boring, deep-buried in your memories as his soft lips embraced yours in the longest embrace you had ever experienced. A new, purple nest was taking form: a wounded dove had finally found its peace in it.

©akiraFcrates