Don't look back.

Everything consists of a lot of rain, a window, two numb hearts, and one emerald painting.

The first splattered down and spilled into the streets like lifeblood, as if it wished to wipe clean the world of beautiful and indestructible sin. This rain finds itself begging at the doors, hoping to forget.

In this weather, people are blind to one another, each enveloped in their own thoughts of home. A bunch of giggling and drenched students flee from the watery onslaught, rushing to the nearest lit window and exclaiming to one another that it is better than nothing, at least until the sky stops crying.

As they step in, the puddles surround them protectively. Perhaps the rain they carried in with them knew? Not unlikely. Their chatter fills the air like pretty bubbles as they look around the art gallery.

There is a girl. She sits very still, on a stool, and holds her spine away from them. The green folds of her coat are weary, creasing with age and velvet.

Like a statue, the man stands next to her. The sculpted features of his face pass for marble, the sign of life in his eyes faintly- no, barely- there. They are but three paces from one another, but to an observant outsider it feels like ten thousand miles.

But this is not the case. The blind students approach innocently, their questions paper planes, their eyes painted over. Words spill teeth to tongue to air, bouncing off and away in trajectories. The girl and the man- they are not interested in the students, with their visible joy and their oblivious smiles.

She speaks first.

"It's raining." The green hangs on her, over her. She repeats herself. "It's raining outside."

He doesn't move. Propped in front of the easel, he is not painting; it seems as though he's waiting for the canvas to paint on him. He is colorless and blank, hoping for his skin to be touched, to be lived in. Those lips of his respond-

"I wonder if I should get more gray paint." His hands don't stir. Bonelessly, they clatter to his sides and hang perversely.

If only-

"When do you think it'll stop?" The girl again. Around the couple, the students have assimilated themselves into the gallery. It's alright; they're people who easily fit in, and they've seemed to replace the artwork. Just stand around and watch without eyes as the charade folds on and on.

The question hangs in the air with a fantail of a hundred meanings. What was "it"? The rain? The man is unsure. Agitated, he finally reaches out- and begins to rearrange brushes.

"I don't know."  A pause. Not looking at one another, both summon their voices and:

"Do you think-"

"I need to-"

The audible silence that follows is exacting penance with its inescapable weight. Outside, the rain beats its fists against the glass and shrieks to no avail, trapped in a spectator's box with the eyeless students.

"I think it's clearing up." This is from the girl, her fists snow-white and tangled in lugubrious fabric. "I think the sun will come out soon."

There is a gallery, with a storm outside and painted people on the inside. Two figures on a stage with a cardboard-cutout audience and skyward tears as the backdrop. Who will be left to pick up the broken marionettes as they finish the last act?

And what makes you think the storm is only raging outside?

The girl is finished. She gets to her feet- somehow- and stares somewhere at the man's shirt. Anywhere but his face, which is beginning to crack and fold in on itself from the rain. She continues;

"I hope-" She looks up at him.

The words are dashed to pieces on the floor. Here- this is a fragment of a green girl. Another fragment showcasing a shattered man. It is full of want and saying "No." But:

"Yes. You should go." His ears are stuffed full of cotton, his eye sockets burn slightly. Add one more minute to this and he knows he will begin to crumple towards the floor, so he lifts the corners of his mouth with almost Herculean effort and demands it of her.

"Go."

Anything would have been sufficient. One last glance of goodbye. He would have succumbed, but it would have been a happier ending.

It didn't happen. Ten steps. Twenty steps. Here was the door- she could've turned back, the glass was screaming for her, pleading with her to stay. The gallery walls were moving in closer; too late.



She left, and with her the colors. They were sucked out of the art, out of the souls. The man turns back to his easel, and he has no idea of what he's doing, because he can't see.

And then he remembers that damn thing. It boils inside of him, the bile thrusting itself into his throat as he strides jerkily towards the back of the room-

He rips the curtain off the wall. And framed there, she sits in vibrancy, her smile painful, her eyes hoping. Regret is streaking down the phthalo paint, but no one notices- she's still here, right?

Right?

The rain has collapsed into reflection. All the water in the world will never clean this.

Behind the window, carnage and ripped heartstrings hold reign.