Playing With Paint

“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

Beginnings...

Ribbons crusted with salt and lfluttering like broken bird's wings. 

Her dress is soaked and salt stained, cold with wind and clinging to the line of muscle in her legs and the ridges of her ribs. There is a bruise on her head, just above her right temple, purple and green but fading. She lifts her hand to her head and gingerly feels the bump. There is a wisp of a memory, striking her head on something sharp, but it is gone with the next wave that ebbs onto the shore. The sand is cold and grainy, wet and heavy beneath her feet, already in between her toes. 

Art by Bridgette Williams

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Origami Beasts

Small paper animals, each with perfect folds imitating ears, paws, teeth. Some are written on, snatches of sonnets and poetry and myth in swirling black ink that fade and trail away. One paper is small, the shape of a tiger, ready to pounce. It’s fur grows brightly and what was only seconds ago a scrap of delicately folded paper is now a snowy tiger, pacing on four great paws. Black script has become perfect black lines. Birds and butterflies flap under the ceiling, rustling and disturbing the lanterns, but the flames in them do not go out. A white deer with long antlers blanketed with soft white fuzz travels through the spectators. The lady smiles and suddenly she seems younger, incredibly young to be working in a circus, but she lifts paper creations off of her hands that take to the air and are given life and wings. The creatures fill the tent with sound and the spectators reach out to touch them but their fur and skin feels as smooth as paper.

One by one the creatures disappear, birds and butterflies quieting, the deer shrinking behind the tiger. Finally there is only the tiger, and a collection of tiny paper animals on the ground. The tiger crouches, as tough ready to pounce and many visitors step back, but it becomes impossible small until the lady scoops it into her hand. She smiles slightly, cradling the origami beast.

Art by Helem Musselwhite

Text by Lucie MacAulay