“Sometimes you look like a painting I saw,” he said. “Half
of it was gold, really pale and the rest was all shadows and light.” He lifted
his finger and traced her face, putting pressure under her cheekbones and
around her sunken eyes. “You’re blonde but your face is so white, then you have
these shadows here,” he pressed into her cheeks, “and under your eyes.”
Cynthia blinked; white spidery eye lashes against the dark
shadows they cast on his index finger.
“But people probably tell you you’re pretty all the time.
Since you model.” He pulled his hand away.
“People make me pretty,” Cynthia murmured, looking down at
the pictures, ivory hair hanging in her face like an antique wedding veil.
“Yeah, but not the way other people make themselves pretty.
You don’t have to try. You just let them paint you anyway,” he said it bitterly.
“You let them.”
Cynthia’s heartbeat filled her head, heavy rain on pavement.
His face turned red.
“Sorry, I meant that it’s wrong. What they do to you. You
don’t let them, they just do it.”
Text by Lucie MacAulay
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