The Painting

#39 Invisible Ink - Duch Dofheicthe

I stayed until the water ran cold sending shivers up my naked spine forcing me out of the comfortable confinement of the glass shower box. No matter how much I scrubbed – I washed by body head to toe four times – I couldn't seem to feel clean. I knew it wasn't literal dirt that lined my fingernails or dotted my arms in freckles, it was an unsettling feeling that coated my skin like invisible ink.

Running my fingers over the steam covered mirror I traced a box around my head. Would I ever shake the feeling of the moral dirtiness Monroe's touch infected me with? I cleared the rest of the box allowing my reflection to perpherate through the foggy mirror. I looked no different. I stared closer, for some reason I was expecting a change in my physical appearance that paralleled the transformation happening within me.

I tried to imagine what features would take on my emotions. Would the corners of my mouth hold my lips in a taught line for fear that a subtle smile or grimace would give away my joys or worries? Would my eyes fade until they resembled the color of a shadow, the light supplied by my curiosity toward my mother hastily blown out?

In some capacity I wished that there were physical markers – aside from the bruises on my arms – that indicated the marathon of experiences I'd been through. That would make it easier wouldn't it? Harder to hide, but then again people tended to stray away from questions they thought they already knew the answers to.

The clothes Lyle gave me fit well enough, a loose cotton shirt bearing the name of a band I didn't recognized fell past my hips. The band of the sweatpants was loose enough that I had to roll it and the pant legs up a few times to keep from drowning in them, but the pockets were big enough for me to place Mo Soileireacht. In seconds I felt awkward and took my mother's work into my hands wrapping it in another tight hug.

How could such a beautiful painting hold such dark secrets behind its canvas? Why did my mother hide her journal, I wondered? Why couldn't she have scrawled a simple 'do not read this or else' on the cover, why go through the extra step of hiding it?

Did she fear Monroe? I shivered, I knew first hand that she was right to, but then why did she go back to him? Love, the simple confession played over and over again in my mind but I refused to accept it wholeheartedly.

She had me, wasn't I enough?

Apparently not. The realization struck me and I grabbed the journal from the painting angrily throwing it against the door.

The sound of the paper binding striking the wood echoed in the silence. I couldn't care less as I sunk to the floor and turned my attention to the painting, gripping it tightly on each side of the simple frame until my knuckles turned white.

I didn't intend to break it, although imaging the crisp snapping sound I wondered if that would free me, unchain me from my mother's shrouded life. Was that what I wanted?

No.

I let out a tense sigh and relaxed my grip on the painting. I was being an idiot, lashing out at an inanimate object thinking that by destroying something she'd touch I was in some effect hurting her.

"May?" A gentle knock came at the door. "Are you ok?" Lyle inched the door open.

I said nothing as I continued to stare at the painting, only looking up when she took a step forward and bent down to pick up the bent journal from the ground.

"There's this thing called a door knob." She tapped the journal lightly in her palm. In a few steps she knelt down beside me.

Dazed, I shook my head, hardly registering her presence.