Best Left Dark

A prodigy of sorts in art, bare minimalism your style, paper thin images of pain and longing. Stark, cool images surround me in the hall where I first see you. Though the way they press against the soul, might seem to rob some of breath, they contain me in cocoon-like constraints and make me feel safe. I see you, the artist — for it can only be you who created this swaddling — black hair, cow lick, a stray lock falling forward, eclipsing one shockingly blue eye.

I pause, breath held, only letting it go when you carelessly toss the hair from your eyes with a flick of your head . You share a brief glance, upturned lips slight and barely parted, eyes left out of the equation, unmatched in mood. This, a simple indication of disinterest, yet I’ve never been one for obsequiousness nor what is painfully obvious.

You turn away, then think better or it, turning back to look, head dropping forward then turned just so to evince what you seem to intend as a bad boy sulkiness. I might think you have learned this part of the artists aura if it were not so very much your own. But no, it is something else, something that jars, which I quickly ignore, much as you go on to ignore me.

When later, you hold out your hand, as if a gentlemanly gesture despite having filled the night with anything but, I take it, knowing not nor caring where you lead. When we arrive, I don’t bother to take in my surroundings, intent on the heat at my center and they way you flatten your palm against my back, forcing me to you. You take without gentleness, seeming to care only for your own pleasure, and in that I find mine as well. It is a game for now, and later will work itself out, I tell myself.

When I wake alone, the dimness fools me into thinking it is either very early, but no, for we arrived very early. But then it was dark when we arrived, wasn’t it? I seem to remember it, yes, and no. I smooth the frown with my fingertips lest it forces wrinkles into my skin, smile instead even as I wrestle with the question of time. It must have been early when we arrived then. But add the hours I struggled to please, lying awake and, even though I thought no modern woman should be, I was satisfied nonetheless. Finally, sleep. Late, then, I conclude. It must be late.

Getting out of bed, my eyes acclimate and I notice something unusual about the walls. Wallpaper? No, as I look closer from the middle of the room, I can make out the figures better, two lobe-like shapes, overlapping slightly. I feel my face screw up in an effort to see, then it comes to me. Hearts. Rotating to take in the entire room I see the walls are covered in hearts made from velvety paper. Hearts of all sizes. I feel my own heart stutter in response. Then I remember. Valentine’s Day. It’s Valentine’s Day, and my heart rolls over as I bring my hands to my face.

I look for a robe or something other than the dress I had on, making due with a large satiny black button down I wear as a dress. Buttoning it, I frown again. Right over left? Unisex, must be one of those unisex designs favored by the artistic set. It seems a bit full, especially in the sleeves, for a man . . . Artistic. It’s a creativity thing, I force the thought into my head, to ward off the glaringly apparent truth.

Looking around again, I find no television, no computer, no sound system, not even a radio visible. I pick up my phone, seeing a stained note beneath it.

“Going out, back at some point, stay or go, your choice,” it reads. Feigned arrogance and disregard, the artist’s way. I smile knowingly.

Glancing down, my phone corrects my previous impression, the glowing 12:30 cannot indicate I slept 15 hours. Not early, not late.

The windows have no coverings and the skylight I spotted from bed is bare also, yet no light comes in. Of course not, It is the home of a bachelor and an artistic one at that. He can’t be expected to be concerned with the mundane notion of cleaning. Besides, what man would think to wash windows?

The few lamps scattered around, have bulbs that are mostly burned out. The few that aren’t can’t be more than 60 watts. I search for replacements but can’t seem to locate any in the normal places. Such a bachelor, that one. A box in the pantry is filled with mismatched bulbs, no boxes, and after shaking a dozen or so, I find several brighter ones that remain silent when I test to see if their filament is intact.

One, then a second and the hearts are becoming clearer, my own continuing to expand at my lover’s gesture, for that is already how I think of him.

This year will mark the end of my hatred for this day and I’ll remember until my life’s last breath how the hearts shimmered iridescent in the shadows. Definitely rendered by an artist, the shapes slightly unusual, long and narrow, the dip between the two, deep and familiar?

Perhaps I’ll wait to put in the last bulb? Draw out the anticipation, let the hearts remain mysterious and a bit unclear.

Who am I kidding? What will I do, search for something on my phone’s browser I don’t need to know and have no interest in just to waste time before bringing them fully to light? He intended me to see them after all. Why else would he have done it?

My mother said I could justify anything, my father, that I could sell a dipper of water in the middle of a flood. I slowly screw in the third bulb, which winks, then blinks, then finally burns. The air around me brightens.

Looking around desperate to see, then desperate not to see, I beg my mind to take me back to the heart filled room, the gesture of a man experiencing the pangs of new love, the indifference, an act. My hand reaches out of it own own volition (without my directing it), grasping for the last bulb, the pain first of the hot glass then the sharp glass which cuts into my palm when I crush it in my rush to prevent my eyes from seeing what they already have a far off imitation.

And later, when I hear the door open then shut, I don’t so much as startle. Nor do I try to determine why I still huddle there in the dark on the floor in the middle of the room away from the wings. The multitude of iridescent wings, pins stuck through each, are what have taken my breath this time, while my hand no longer drips blood onto the rough, encrusted floorboards. And as hard as I try to force it, force the mind to see what the heart wants, not what the light wrought, my power of persuasion fails me. It lifts away on upturned draft, to reside amongst winged beauty, content to remain aloft, hovering aloof, to alight where the butterflies soar.