The Chameleon and the Artist
A bullet whistles as it shoots through the evening air, did you know that? As the flowers dance their nightly rituals in the melodic breeze, a bullet whistles just long enough for you to hear it before you feel it. I’m a well read person you know, I’ve read plenty of books with characters who encounter an untimely bullet or two and I thought I knew exactly what it would feel like to be shot. But no words can do the moment nor the feelings justice, so I’m not going to even try.
I see his face looming over mine, possibly the last earthly still frame I will take, and I see his quizzical grin gracing his soft, enticing lips. As lingering thoughts skip though my mind I do wonder, what if it had happened differently…
There was a thin frost on the grass that morning, just enough to make the blades glint silver in the morning sunshine. The trees were still, almost in reverence of the serene beauty that was bared before them. The sun was slowly bleeding into the morn sky-scape, painting the sky in thick brushstrokes of mauve and crimson. And your fingers entwined with mine completed the picture.
You sat beside me, your face like jigsaw pieces in an eclectic collage. In your lips lied the sultry, cinnamon kisses your high-school girlfriends still raved about ten years on. A toast to your childhood was arranged in the form of a nasal cavity, your cute nose the kind relatives would have cooed over every Christmas and birthday. To the sides you had rosy cheeks, the soft playful kind of cheeks that would blushed when you tripped or giggled a little too hard. A little testament to the fact that your artwork was still human. And to complete the work were little drops of sapphire, disguised as eyes, dropped in the middle of the canvas.
Perfect.
You were a work of art, my dear, a work of art.
My work of art.
Perfection is a state that is not continuous, but sporadic. A little perfect here, a little perfect there, but nothing so sweet as a continuous perfect day or week or love.
But together we thought we could change that. Thought we could change the world. In the mirror we saw reflections of heroes in shining amour. In ourselves we saw subjects of a round table armed with swords of beauty and truth.
We thought we could be forever.
We thought we could be perfection.
We thought we could be the exception to every rule.
It was spring, in the month of May and Paris was at our mercy. From our rooftops, where we danced the waltzes of forbidden love, the city was ours. The shimmering lights and beautiful girls, the tattered newsprint and coffee cups on sidewalks, they were all ours. No one knew us, for we were wanderers in a foreign land. The strangers sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb. Simply revelling in our anonymity and basking in our perfection. It was like we were an island, floating alone and free in a world that was created purely for us and served to us on silver platter just for our enjoyment.
We were different yet part of a grander picture.
Gypsies we were, free and at one with everything.
Chameleons that blended into the steamy nights.
And as I lay here tracing Monets and Picassos with sanguine strokes, I still don’t know where we went wrong. Where I went wrong. Where my brushstrokes turned sour and the pencil lead broke. It is given that it’s the prerogative of chameleons to change their colours, but I will never be party to why you changed.
Pink to red.
Yellow to brown.
Blue to black.
It was in Cologne that it all fell apart; that little, beautiful city where you shattered my pretty little emeralds while your sapphires glinted on in the night. It was some sweet German girl with golden locks tied up in pigtails that stole our perfection. Our illusion of perfection. She served us once in a bar, and with her by your side you swore your revenge on me that day. Swore you would never let me love another for how I had ruined you.
It’s not hard for chameleon to change his colours, you know.
And as I heard the bullet whistle my requiem I wasn’t surprised that it was coming, it always had been coming, just biding its time. We were doomed from the beginning, star-crossed as they would have it. A chameleon can only change his colours so many times before his camouflage is broken.