She steps off the train and breathes in the lively air of the city. This is where I belong, she thinks to herself. She looks around and smiles a private, knowing smile. Her hands slip into her pockets, hiding the pitch black of her fingers that marks her as something else. She doesn’t know how people will view her now, so she waits. The streets are loud and quiet at the same time, and when she reaches her apartment, the serenity that is home comforts her.
She stands in the middle of the room, staring around her at her mess of a life. Canvas. Paint. Candles and rainy days comfort her as she pulls the curtains back, revealing the cloudy sky over the city she knows and loves. The corners of her mouth pull up into a smile and she closes her eyes, listening to the drops hit the window and the music that comes from the slightly warped record in the corner. This is home, and she knows that.
The canvas lets him in, pulling him through his own imagination as the paints spill out almost on their own, and the brush swirls the surface of its own accord. He cries, his tears falling in the jar of paint water below him. His hands shake, and the thunder shakes the house along with them. He should stop crying, but the tears will not cease. He looks over at the window and sees himself, cheeks red and puffy from sobbing, but beautiful in his own way.
Music flows from his headphones as he shakes his can of paint. He is an artist, but he must hide. The brick building looms in front of him as he paints a mural of emotion. His feelings spilling out onto his canvas, he smiles to himself. He loves this. The thrill of knowing someone will one day find this and think, I wonder who did this. He hears a car door slam shut, and jumps, his heart racing. He packs his paint and runs.
Her guitar sits, collecting dust in the corner of the room. Her hands have long since stopped being able to play the strings. Her fingers wrinkled and worn, she picks up her mug off the counter and smiles at the instrument of her childhood. She remembers playing it for her first girlfriend, and later for her wife. The love song, La Vie en Rose. She sits with her cat, remembering the smiling face of her wife, the love she felt for the woman who changed her life for good.
His friends laugh and smile with him as they walk down the street, surrounded by old and twisted trees. One of them smashes a root beer bottle on the sidewalk and they all laugh. He looks around and thinks, this will never end. And he was right. The coins clinking on the store counter, the feeling of flying on a trampoline. The tears that spill down his cheeks as he tells them about his father, and the way he screamed at his mother last night. The laughter at a bad joke, the hand holding. The sound of warped records that he kept when his mom wanted to throw them away. He was right. None of it would end.
Nostalgia is pastel pink and gold. It’s forest green and sky blue. It has too many colors to see, too many feelings to describe. It’s the reason she smiled to herself as she stepped off that train. The reason she feels comfort in the rain. The reason he hid as he painted, and ran when he was almost discovered. The reason she kept her guitar, despite being unable to play it. The reason his friends held his hands as he said goodbye when finally, it did end. No matter how much he didn’t want it to.
