The dragonfly tattoo artist

24

Lauren was wearing a beanie, a jacket up to her neck, pants and high boots, all black. She also had sunglasses.

The tattoo artist believed that these were the same clothes Lauren had worn the first time they'd seen each other at the tattoo shop, but it was hard to be sure.

The clothes didn't look the same on her anymore.

She didn't look like her anymore.

From a distance you could see an extreme pallor, sunken cheeks and incredible weight loss.

The jacket no longer fitted perfectly to her body, but danced with it. Her pants no longer had thighs to hug, and Camila was sure that the painter had been forced to wear a belt so that they wouldn't fall. The high boots no longer seemed an extension of her body, but a discomfort to her walking. The beanie was misplaced, and the glasses were trying to hide something. Her posture was no longer straight, and her gaze seemed to have become the best friend on the floor.

And there was no safety in her when she stood in front of the lectern, and looked at no one when she began to speak.

"Good evening" Lauren said hello.

She no longer spoke in a firm, high tone. Now her voice was a small, broken and fragile whisper that the wind could carry away whenever it wanted without asking for any permission.

Camila's stomach turned. She felt a terrible need to cry.

"Thank you for coming to my exhibition. I'm very grateful for..."

But Camila didn't hear a single word from Lauren, because she was too focused on her trembling hands, her broken lips, her dull cheeks, her disheveled hair and the visible cigarette box in the front pocket of her jacket.

Camila hadn't been ready for something like that. She would never have been ready.

Camila had wished to see Lauren happy, without pain in her face, with a smile of superiority. She'd wished to see her with another girl, loving her, kissing her passionately in every corner of that gallery.

Seeing her happy with someone else would've been less painful.

"You may wonder what's behind these blankets" The tattoo artist finally managed to hear Lauren's words, and with glassy eyes she saw her pointing the work behind her "It's a long story, but I'm going to tell it. I need you to understand it so you can feel it too."

But Camila, who could only hold her breath, didn't need to know the story. She was part of it, and she could feel it.

"I lived a difficult time. I still am, actually. I lost many people I loved, they left me, and I got lost with them" In their hoarse voice there was a palpable sadness, and the room seemed to have become as black as their clothes "...It was during my first loss, the death of my grandmother, that I met her. I met my tattoo artist without tattoos."

The room was quiet, perhaps too quiet, but Camila's mind was full of screams that ordered her to hug Lauren.

"I wanted to get a tattoo in her honor, a dragonfly, and my tattoo artist marked on my skin all the love that had gone with her. She hugged me that time, and no one else had... and I felt like I had hope."

<<You still have>> Camila thought, but it wasn't enough.

"I invited her to dinner when my second loss happened. That was my desperate attempt to ask for help when I still wanted it" Her chest was slowly tightening. The story, Camila thought, can be really different from other points of view "...We talked, we met, and I liked her. Maybe too much."