Kaleidoscope eyes

Chapter Seven

He carries stars in his pockets because he knows she fears the dark. Whenever sadness pays her a visit, he paints galaxies on the back of her hands.
-Alaska Gold|

'You don't mind, do you?' you asked, tugging at your navy blue sweater. 'It's kinda hot.'
We were in the study, playing chess. You were getting better- Not that you were actually great but at least you now understood how the game worked.
'Sure,' I replied, knowing exactly what lay beneath your covered arms.
It had been four days since you started talking to me again. We hadn't mentioned your cutting problem at all and I knew you appreciated me not pestering you. Ever since that day, you were a bit more serious, a bit more reserved. You still joked and teased but you didn't try too extra hard to seem happy. Why would you? I knew now that you weren't what you sold out.
You removed your sweater, revealing your shirt and exposing your arms. One scar looked a bit too recent- maybe a week old. I wondered when you got that one- why you got that one.
I must have grimaced. My gaze must have lingered. I must have done something because you let out a heavy sigh.
'You know, I don't want to hurt myself,' you uttered.
'Then why do you?' I wondered.
'It's like nicotine.' You elaborated, 'You don't want to do it. You said it yourself; it offers you relief while it murders you. It hurts you on the inside.'
You were right; we had the same problem. Only that now, because of you, I didn't need nicotine- at least not as much as before. You were like my substitute high and my substitute sedative all at once. You showed me the world through a phantasmagorical lens and offered me relief. Why couldn't I have the same effect on you? Was your pain that deep?
I stared at your eyes. They were the most beautiful things ever. They danced with so much light, so much colour- it was like gazing through a kaleidoscope. Your lower arms were the exact opposite, an erratic pattern of an ugly red-brown patchwork of skin and scar. Yes- your pain had to be skin deep.
I wished your arms could be like your eyes- like the rest of you, beautiful and vibrant. That's when the idea came to me. I got up and went to grab your case of multi-coloured permanent markers from the table. Your eyes trailed me with confusion, even as I returned and sat, cross legged, in front of you. I snatched your arm, rather harshly on my part but I was excited, and started to draw on it with a purple marker.
'What are you-'
'Shhhh,'I interrupted as I took a blue marker and you didn't protest anymore.
I wasn't exactly Leonardo Da Vinci but I could draw, though not often. As I weaved the colours through the lengths of your arms I remembered this one time you took me butterfly hunting.I still wonder where you get these eccentric ideas from.
It was a couple of weeks ago. You made me take my bike so that we could ride to a nearby meadow and gave me a butterfly net. Due to the assortment of flowers, butterflies flocked everywhere. We spent the whole day running up and down the meadow chasing butterflies of every size and colour and putting them into a jar. I don't know how you always got me to do the strangest of things and make me enjoy them. The only time I had done this was for my biology class back in secondary, and even then I had left it all to my group members. At the end of the day we sat side by side on the grass. You held out the jar in which we had put the butterflies we had caught.
'Beautiful, right?' you had stated.
I turned my face and looked at you. I could tell you were enchanted by the dozens of vivid fluttering wings. All I could think about was yes, Eva, you are beautiful.
I couldn't believe I had gone butterfly hunting with a girl and had actually enjoyed it. Then again, the girl was you.
'So what are you going to do with them?' I had wondered.
'Set them free of course,' you had replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the entire world.
'What?' I croaked, failing to understand why we had spent an entire afternoon chasing and trapping butterflies only to set them free. 'Then why did we do all this?'
You shrugged. 'You know the crazy thing about people?'
'Tell me.'
'For some reason human beings love to hurt beautiful things.' You had remarked. 'We prod and cut and pin- and we trap and cage them trying so hard to understand what makes them beautiful. We put them up on our walls and watch them as they die and crumble to dust.'
You stared at the jar with so much intensity that I had been afraid it would shatter under your gaze. You were obviously passionate about these things.
'We never fully understand,' you continued as you unscrewed the lid of the jar, 'that the beauty lies in their mystery and that our poking and our prodding- our cutting only makes the beauty ugly.'
You dropped the lid and dozens upon dozens of bright colourful wings fluttered into the blue sky. You observed them with the burning passion of a thousand stars, their bright shades reflecting in your eyes. As I had watched them too, I realised that you were right. The butterflies were, by far, more stunning as they flew around freely than they had been in that jar.
When I finished drawing on your arms, I brought one of your wrists to my lips and placed a fleeting kiss on a tiny pink scar.
Your voice was soft. 'Ezekiel, what are-'
'There,' I cut in, letting go of your wrist. 'If you can't stop hurting yourself at least, - at least try not to hurt them.'
On the length of your arms I had drawn dozens of colourful butterflies and I had left small traces of bare skin in between the wings where you could slide your sharp blade when you needed to. I knew I couldn't get you get you to stop but at least, if you only cut where I hadn't drawn the butterflies, it would minimise the damage.
'Oh, Ezekiel.' Your voice was delicate, almost as soft as butterfly wings.
Tears sparkled in your eyes and you flung your arms around my neck. I was stunned for a second, but only a second, and then I hugged you back. I knew in that moment we both thought of what you had said that day when we went butterfly hunting, about how human beings cut and prod and loved to hurt beautiful things. Only difference was that as you thought of butterflies, I thought of you.