Her eyes felt like a multidimensional representation of the feminine aura. While she sat on the damp sand staring at the silent sea, she looked… delicate, she looked… beautiful. It was as if every sunset I had ever laid my eyes upon wasn’t enough to surmise the beauty locked beneath her smile. Her supple skin glowed, and her hair tied in a messy bun, slowly began to fall against her shoulders. Even the greatest of artists could never contemplate capturing the beauty in her smile.
There was something more to her, an allure that provoked you to probe further than what the eyes could see. The sunset’s marmalade and canary rays of light fell on her face and highlighted her delicate and artistic features. Sitting there with nothing more than a five dollar, five-year-old, dirty painting palette and two brushes (both stolen from the town’s art center), I couldn’t understand how everyone hadn’t fallen in love with the way she smiled.
As much as I tried to pull my eyes away from her, my gaze remained addicted to her – to her open smile, her innocent laugh, her messy brunette hair, her grey eyes, her honeyed voice, and her symmetrical face.
I wanted to talk to her, but perhaps a shy introverted boy who no one has ever loved isn’t meant to talk to ethereal, pretty beings like her. I continue to watch her as she gets up almost musically and walks up to me. I struggle to quickly hide all my geriatric art materials and a very amateur sketch I’d scribbled out. She sits down beside me and smiles. We didn’t share a conversation, but I remember my heart palpitating more than it should have.
What does a man do when the power of words is overridden by the power and harmony of silence? We stared into each other’s eyes, and it was as if I had learnt her deepest secrets, lining the tissue beneath her lips. My spinal cord was overwhelmed with the number of stimuli it received from just gazing at her.
As she left, she placed her hands on my face and closed my eyes. I didn’t open them for a while. There was a warmth from the touch of her fingers that left a tingling sensation around my face; and I didn’t want that feeling to disappear.
Love is a dagger better kept in a sheath because I just had my heart stolen, perhaps forever. I drove back home and stayed awake all night long. Sitting on my couch, I lightly graze my fingers across my face. In twenty-seven days, every cell of my skin she would’ve touched, would be regenerated. I would lose every part of me that had been in contact with her. I laid wide awake till four, staring at the white ceiling.
I impulsively got out of bed and drove to my comfort spot, a reclusive, desolate space in the middle of our town; grabbing a few rusty cans of spray paints on the way. Perhaps the greatest art is one that pulsates from what your heart desires. For eighteen hours, I painted a woman I would never meet again; in hope that her beauty would be tattooed for the world to admire.
– Aanya Khandelwal (10H)