She curled up on the park bench situated behind two large trees, her back wedged between an armrest and the wooden backing. She remembered his crooked smile, his rich brown eyes behind his glasses. He wasn’t striking, but she found him charming in a way that she couldn’t describe to others. He had thinning hair around his temples, gangly with not much height to explain why. Still she waited for him.
He appeared beside her suddenly, as though he had always been there. She looked up at him, ignoring the fear that had danced within her before settling. He was a far cry from the men her mother hoped she would bring home. He had a presence of shadowed trouble; as though he was tainted by something you couldn’t describe, but knew was there. A skull settled in the hollow of his throat, glinting silver. Still she moved so he could sit beside her, and still she wrapped her arms around him.
Were they mismatched? She was bright, enthusiastic and warm. People responded to her flashing smiles and pleasant atmosphere that twirled around her, her blue eyes bright and alive. He was dressed in a black singlet, his ripped jeans showing his knees. He held out a kind of defensive protection, as though a threat could appear around the corner. Experience had dulled the excitement of youth, time had scrapped across him like nails across flesh. Had hardened him.
Yet still she held him closer, and he softened in her arms. She looked into his eyes and felt his protection wash over her. He was not prim and proper, or dressed neatly. He was not her “type.” But she smiled into his eyes and he produced for her the journal he had promised her, its leather bound case hinting at the battered secrets hidden within.
She began to read. She could feel hope and fear battling inside him as she consumed each page. She read about lost loves, about addictions and experiences that had attacked his soul. She read about a child surrounded by shadows, learning how to talk to them, befriend them, and use them to see through tomorrow. Truly terrible things she could never do, emotions as real and well intentioned as hers. He was human behind the black clothing, behind the cocky behaviour.
She turned to look at him, at the image he had painted for himself. At a past that sprawled across him, that had coloured in the lines of his face, the shadows that never quite reached behind his glasses. She pressed her hand against the painting he had become, as the 2D image that hid his kindness, his compassion, his intelligence. She smiled at the laughter and longing within those deep, loving chocolate brown eyes. A small light peaked out from those eyes, a small candle worth of light. There she silently vowed to help him, to love him as he yearned for. To believe in him.
She bent down to her bag that rested by her feet and pulled out a single brush, its’ fine tip black to the eye. She reached for his hand, unclenching his hands with her fingers to slip the little brush within. She looked into the painting, passed what he wanted others to see, into the hope that secretly burned within his eyes.
“I see you.” She said softly, “I see you behind the swirling paint. If you want to be the potential you and I both know you are, I’m here to help you.”
“It’s such a little brush.” He replied doubtfully, looking down into his hands.
“Change, true change cannot happen overnight. It is ongoing, one stroke at a time.”
He looked at the brush and offered it back saying “why don’t you paint me better? Make me more?”
She smiled gently and shook her head, reaching up to stroke his face, ‘I cannot do that boy – I would make you into what I want you to be, not who you wish to be. Only you have the power to change. You have to believe you can, you have to want to. You have the choice.”
“I want to.” He whispered.
She smiled and handed him back his journal, “I’ll stand beside you the whole way.” She promised, reaching into her pocket where another small brush was coated in silver.
“We all can change together for the good. One brush stroke at a time.”
“And then?” he asked.
“Then maybe along the way you’ll work out where I get the paint brushes from.” She grinned.
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