I wring my wrists until the skin lights on fire - raw and anxious. Mrs. Moon stands stunned in the doorway, eyes locked on the painted peonies. One thin manicured hand, raised in dumbfounded surprise, rests in her dark hair, the other is suspended halfway to her mouth, brilliantly agape. The red-tinted lips move without words, her head shaking slowly as if unable to fully grasp what she’s seeing.

My heart beats wildly, pounding against my ribs like a frantic bird, trying to break through the cage. My lips part - my mind imagines feelings into motions and motions into rambling silence as I try to make an excuse for myself, but my tongue stays frozen in place. I’m not sure what I’d do or say anyway.

Sorry.

I look a mess - hair pouring over my shoulders in frizzy ringlets. I try to push back the heavy mass of curls and realize my hands are all smudged with scarlet. Acrylic smears. I wipe them off quickly on my blue jeans and set about setting the room to rights, making a mess of the coffee table, as I knock the brushes over and spray new paint over the old, permanent stains.

“Are you ready to go?” I breathe over the burning, nervous pressure filling my lungs, “I’ll just wash up real quick-”

Rather than answer, she steps over toward me and places her hands on my steaming cheeks, using her thumb to wipe the paint from my temple.

“Oh, hush, ‘Licia. Calm down.” her voice trills. “There’s, no hurry, my darling, no need to rush.” 

When she says my name, I sound soft, and delicate, like a song. But for some reason, I still feel guilty, staring at the red stains on my hands, seeing the peonies, laughingly pink, out of the corner of my eye, watching me from their place on the canvas, even as Mrs. Moon holds my face in her hands.

“I’m sorry I just…lost track of time.”

“Shhh,” she says again, shaking her head gently. There is enough comfort in that sound for a thousand heartaches, but I’m at one thousand and one. 

She lets her hands fall, and I start to turn toward the door again, but she doesn’t notice, her eyes straying toward the piece, leaning half dry against the back of the dusty easel.

With one painted finger suspended just above the paper-thin petals, she traces the contours of the smooth lines against the white, the rippling, cresting waves of the bubblegum shade giggling across the textured canvas.

“The flowers are so lifelike,” she murmurs in a soft, lulling, tone as if she’s comforting a sleepy infant. She turns back to me, her eyes smiling like amber nightlights.

“I hadn’t even realized you’d improved this much. You used to complain that you were “so terrible” at flowers, and Kattar practically had to beg you to paint some for him, do you remember?” 

A slight sadness bleeds into the sweet expression as she says this. She breathes a gentle sigh, that knocks the wind out of me, as she studies the piece a second longer, nodding her quiet approval, before adding, in the same low tone:

“These are his favorite, you know.”

“I remember,” I say, trying to ignore the way my heart sinks as I watch the heaviness settle into her eyes like nightfall. The starry irises twinkle faintly with a fading light that makes me sick to my stomach. I force my mouth to smile, like mind control, thinking light thoughts and pushing Kattar’s face- Mrs. Moon’s expression - out of my mind’s eye, in a sort of continuous brainwashing, “I sent him a bouquet, but I’m not sure he’ll like it. I made it myself, and I’d never tried to do flower arrangements before today.”

She smiles, too tired. I see the aging she’s managed to escape up until this point creeping into the lines by her mouth and her eyes, beaming on me with an affection I pretend not to see. If I don’t, I won’t be able to keep functioning.

“If you made it then he’ll like it,” she replies, not bothering to explain what exactly she means by that. Eyes on the peonies again, she breathes, almost in a whisper “He’ll like the painting better, though.”

Her voice rustles through the stuffy living room like a breeze making its way softly through the walls I’ve tried so hard to fortify, in an attempt to keep from falling apart all over again. It barrels into the white fire buried deep in my chest. I burn hotter, all the oxygen disappearing from my lungs.

She doesn’t know. He never told her… 

I try to swallow down the thickness rising in my throat but I choke on the untold.

She tilts her head in my direction, her benevolent smile melting my resilience, and speaks over her shoulder in her painfully natural, confidential way. 

“I was a little worried you would have gotten into a slump…since…you know. I’m glad you’re still painting.”

I nod, not trusting myself to speak, as my conscience screams almost audibly. Anxiety burns like carbon dioxide in my lungs, and my legs express a strong desire to collapse out from under me, but somehow I stay rooted to the spot, breathing like my life depends on it. 

I don’t want her to know but I wish she did already, so we can get to the part that makes sense - where she hates-

Mrs. Moon, I have something to tell you.

My mouth doesn’t open.

I think it like a scream, reverberating through my frame in the nervous trembling in my hands, I try to steady. Clenching them until the palms turn pink from the tension.

Mrs. Moon sighs again, not sadly, but with contended relief, her eyes glistening like polished topaz in their chocolate setting.

“It’s beautiful, Alicia. I’m so proud of you.”

For one second, a horrible sort of thrill surges through my frame- joy and horror, mortal terror and shame stirred together into a blood-red shade of pain.

How many nights have I laid awake, imagining someone speaking those words to me? But not like this. This isn’t how I wanted it to go.

I’m not sure I can take it anymore. 

My smile sags, as the familiar lump reappears, making it difficult to swallow the strangled feeling lodged in the back of my throat.

I look at the floor and pretend to fix my hair to try to avoid her gaze, still, she catches the look.

“How are you taking it, querida?” She asks gently, “The injuries and all?” 

“I’m fine,” I lie quickly before my heart can butt in and speak the truth, “I’m not the one who got the brunt of it. I’m just sore is all.”

I can tell she wants to say something - watching her lips part in slow motion, but I don’t have the strength to have a conversation right now - If I did, I would have to tell her everything.

Mrs. Moon I-

Can’t let her speak - I break the silence, affectedly nonchalant:

“Shouldn’t we be going? It’s going to be a long walk, and the forecast says it’s going to snow later.”

She closes her mouth again, and nods, with that same gentle air, that makes me feel so sick of myself. I search out my coat, and then quickly yank on the worn-out black snow boots I’ve worn since I was fourteen, feeling uncomfortably small, and tired. 

I keep my eyes off her face.

Together we trudge our way slowly through the yard, thick with snow, and then turn onto the sidewalk, round the corner, exiting the culdesac. Not for a second does she question why we’re not taking the car - and I appreciate that - as I continue to make life harder for everyone I love.

Orange Tinted Maiden

Once during the early days of the mental breakdown, I dreamt that the masterpieces on my walls were starting to cry. Collecting large drops of condensation or morning dew, rivers of red and blue made their way hastily down the painted faces, blurring their visages into muddy amalgams of ugly passion, and unsightly collapse. They contorted into the most unnatural expressions of grief, like “The Scream,” but more hollow. “The Heartbreak,” “The Drama Queen.” “The Empty.” “Abyss.”

I watched as each face gradually made its way through the noxious metamorphosis, from the pretty strangers in their brilliant pastels to me, in that stupid red dress, weeping.

I hurried down the stairs then - or it felt like hurrying. Being poured down the brief incline in a torrent of anxiety, like a brittle mortal lifeboat, barely avoiding being capsized on its way down a waterfall. I found the paintings suspended as I left them when my perfectionist's brain let me deem them complete, wearing the right faces, but growing moist from the humidity - the canvas damp and pliable, the paper impossibly fragile. I crouched in the darkness by the easel and cried with them.

That’s when I woke up, staring at the wall, at the “Orange Tinted Maiden,” in all her excruciating glory.