PORTRAIT OF YOU | H.S.

CHAPTER TEN

"All the old paintings on the tombs
They do the sand dance, don't you know?"

She twisted her feet from left to right, her hips moving in the opposite direction of them. She had different paint brushes pushed into her hair, switching brushes as she went; clearly not concerned as to where the paint was going. I watched as she painted out the Amsterdam canals from a photo on her phone. She was so good with her details, so good with making sure even the tiniest cracks could be seen on the ground.

"All the bazaar men by the Nile
They got the money on a bet."

"I see you're choosing to concentrate on landscape vs people tonight." I said, causing her to stop her dancing and turn to face me.

"It just goes by faster than people, people take more time for me, because I concentrate on all their details," she smiled, turning more to me, paint on her eyebrow and nose.

"Have you seen your paintings, Lina? You noticed every single crack on the ground." I chuckled, and she turned back to the painting, tilting her head at it.

"The blonde waitresses take their trays
They spin around and they cross the floor."

"Yeah, but not like humans, like...." she turned back dancing over to me, making me laugh. She got to me and pulled out a paint brush from her hair, "Be my muse?"

Her words made my stomach flip, but I maintained my composure, swallowing and nodding, "Of course."

She grabbed my hand in hers, opening it up and bending my fingers slightly, "Humans have cracks too, but to me, they carry more importance than the cracks on the floor," she took the brush, rolling the bristles between her fingers to make the tip more pointed, "The index finger, having more fine lines than the middle. Makes you wonder, why? Why isn't each finger an exact copy of the other? Cracks on the ground are made from wear and tear, but our fine lines are a part of us since the moment we are born. Some get partnered with scars from our human experiences, others join the lines that form from growing older."

"All the kids in the marketplace say
Walk like an Egyptian."

As she spoke, she began filling in the fine lines on my knuckles with a light blue paint color, "Then, your arms for example, obviously your tattoos make you who you are; they are markings that are uniquely placed and engraved into your skin."

Her fingers traced delicately over the outlines of them, moving into a dip of the muscle on my forearm. She took a different brush from her hair, coated in bits of pink, filling in the dip, "And then, everytime you flex, move, breathe, all your creases, and different ends. They appear, only for some to see, missed by most." She smiled small, guiding me in moving and flexing my arm, filling in the divets she would see, some that I even missed on my own body.

"Hmm, who are you Catalina Sloane? Quirky, witty, funny, pitting vegetables and crunchy carbs against each other. Then speaking so eloquently, it almost escapes you like a poem, looking at everything so delicately, all while walking like an Egyptian."

We both chuckled as she continued to fill in bits of my arm, "I bet you could do it too. You just have to look closely, pay attention to the things people tend to skip over." She said softly, our eyes meeting in a place I hoped we never left.

"Like the small cluster of freckles you get right here?" I said, reaching for a brush in her hair, yellow, running it softly over her freckles.

"Mhm, like that." She said softly.