It has been three and a half weeks since I saw him last, but I have not forgotten his violet eyes, at once secretive and sad. “It’s been too long,” he says. He kisses me deeply, guiltily, in the shaded driveway. The heat of the summer when we met has weakened. Now, the eastside air is even, warm, and soft like the inside of his forearms resting helplessly around my waist.
Like old friends we pick up where we left off but there’s a thin veil between us and I don’t want to be the first to move it. He is guarded and measured when he speaks, but in his silence, he is clear as the full moon. There is someone else.
He takes me to a dive bar where the amber light turns his violet eyes murky, obscuring his thoughts. I lean into this moment where I can be spared the truth and play pretend. He keeps his right arm around me all night long. When it’s not draped around my waist, it’s running up my thigh. It’s tucking hair behind my ear. It’s clutching my left hand. It becomes a part of me, another limb, another I piece I want to protect.
We go to the photobooth and kiss. The strip comes out wet and sulfuric. There’s a black smudge down the center, dividing us neatly, a smokey tear that reaches all the way to my heart. “That’s so strange,” I say. “I’ve never had one print like this.”
At home, he unties my linen blouse and pulls it gently over my head. He unbuttons my jeans and kisses my hips. He’s careful, or afraid, like he’s touching hot coal. On top of me, he kisses my ears, then my lips. “I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. I’ve missed you so much.” He moves further and further down until all I see is violet.
He tells me about his synesthesia. That’s why he likes shoegaze, the dreamy reverb, the harmonizing pedals, the sound you can see. I tell him I like sound you can feel. I feel his voice like a silk sheet, and I want him to wrap me in it. “What color do I sound like?” I ask him in bed. He thinks deeply, his eyes suddenly still and intentional. “Orange… no more red. Salmon, coral maybe,” he says. The colors of sex and sunsets. Bursts of fleeting ecstasy, showstopping, chaotic. My color, my soul, is lustful. It is impermanent. I’m not sure where he goes on the nights he’s not here. I wonder what color she is. I wonder if she’s iridescent, indigo, enduring. I wonder if she soothes him in her cool emerald glow.
Later that week he is gone again, his reasons tenuous and last minute. I go to a concert one night, the type of dreampop that breaks your heart and mends it in one set, only it doesn’t mend it this time. I devolve into hazy, hot tears and again, I see violet. I get terribly drunk off well tequila and the whole night is violet so I can’t escape it. I stumble home and into bed without taking my clothes off.
He texted me at the concert, late, almost 11PM. “What are you up to?” In the morning I respond, “Sorry, went to a concert. Hope you had a nice night.” He comes over in the afternoon and we share a bottle of wine. He grabs my waist, both his hands tepid, but gentle and safe around me, and he guides me to the bed. On top of me, he holds my head between his hands and kisses me but stops abruptly, serious yet abashed. He stares down at me and brushes hair away from my eyes so I can see his clearly: violets in full bloom. Just in that moment I can hear the feint echo of something behind them, an earnestness for the first time. It’s just a flash, then it’s gone. He moves in me until I feel violets growing inside, blooming from deep within, reaching my smudged heart, permeating my red-hot soul. “I wanted you so bad last night,” he says. He makes my name feel soft in his lips, feminizing it, like he’s holding a crepe paper rose between his tongue and teeth. I want to feel him say it again and again and again.
I imagine this must be how the sunset feels each evening as people flock to appreciate her coral hues, her waning fury. Or how the fields of violets feel, their window for blooming and pruning short, fleeting, special. The love they must have for those brief moments of care and tenderness. Is it so bad to just be adored for one small moment, for nothing I’ve done but for my mere existence? To be objectified like a sunset, a flower, or a woman?
When he climaxes, I hold his head to my chest and think I love you, I love you, I love you. He leaves then, he’s stayed too long. He has plans, somewhere to be. I wonder, then, if he goes to the iridescent girl and holds her head to his chest and thinks I love you, I love you, I love you.