The Bomb of Blue

Explicit sexual description and content.

She found herself falling into the blues again, picking them up and spreading them across the canvas. It could have been a response to the heatwave, but she couldn’t think of using any other color than the cool hues of blue. All shades and shapes and slivers of blue. As each one covered the canvas, she felt the color covering her, coating her wet skin. Her eyes were crowded with blue. There wasn't a brush that wasn't blue by the end of the days that she spent in front of her easel.

The window wasn't open, but she could still hear the noises of the street. She heard the silences, too. Of the two, the silences were more disturbing. She couldn't make the colors blue enough. She was a tattered lining of a shower curtain that once helped to keep the water inside but now is useless and annoying to replace. She didn't know how to take it down. She was afraid. This was what she was now. Useless. And every face or hand or neck or curve that she painted was yet another reminder that she once was vibrant and alive, but now that was no more. She was nothing.

Sometimes she would think that what she needed was care. She wanted someone to reach in and help mend her. Someone who could use a gentle touch to lift her up off the ground where she had been sitting in a heap. To help her find the other colors that sat dry and ignored on the shelves behind her. Someone who could hold her and cradle her and kiss her forehead. Someone who could touch their lips to hers and remind her that she is indeed useful. Not tattered. They would heal her, this person with warm lips. They would bring her body and soul back from the cobalt shadows that existed at the bottom of an empty bottle of blue. She needed saving. Salvation. She needed a way out.

She ran the brush across the surface, and painted a sky that was not so much a sky as it was a monolith. Sorrow in oil. She could not stop thinking about this mystery person. The Savior. And she tried to wet her lips, to kiss back, but it was almost as if all of the moisture in her mouth was gone.

That's when a different thought came. She thought of the real man that she actually knew from social media. He had paid a lot of attention to her, and he complimented her about her art. Her looks. He almost stopped short of expressing desire for her, but she thought maybe he was afraid that her culture or her country would inhibit her. Maybe he was right.

She wasn't the type of woman who would flirt online. She wasn't the type who would want to sext or send dirty pictures. He almost stopped short of expressing desire. Almost, but he didn’t. When she thought about him, she realized that he was not the man that could step in and hold her tight and let her cry and care for her darkness. No, he was not that man. And then something happened inside of her. Something moved very quietly like the inner machinery of a clock. Something that had been still was now turning. It wasn't her need to be comforted. Not that at all.

She looked behind her at the other paints that seemed to cower under the arch of the window, and she reached out for red. She felt the heat of the color, but she realized that the man who was courting her was the color. She thought of him as red, but that thought burrowed deep under the flirtation and the subtle sweet compliments. She never let herself acknowledge it before right now. She didn't want those fiery colors because she actually found some strange comfort in her grief.

However, now she wants the color. Now she wants him. She wants his heat. Why shouldn't she? He certainly made it clear that he wanted her. He thought she was a beautiful woman. He saw her curves. He saw her lips. He told her. He told her with a consequential tone.

For the first time she wished he could take those censors away from his messages. She never thought she would ever think something so sordid. If she had not been swimming in these blue cool waters, he might not have seen her. Now she wants him because she wants to return. She wants to come back to life despite the heat. Because she realizes she has been something much less than dead. Others were dead. Many were dead. She was not dead. She was blank. Blue. She was empty. She is a monochromatic canvas. And she wants him to paint her red.

She sits down on the couch. She has lost weight. It wasn't a healthy way to lose weight. Grief and the numbness of the chaos of her country wasn't a good way to lose weight, but she has to acknowledge that she looks more like a younger version.

She is a naturally curvy woman. But her neckline and her arms are thin. Thinner than they had been the year before. He had commented on how attracted he was to her arms. He told her he could imagine holding her by those arms. And she thought about him holding her by her arms. These thoughts scared her, but so did the red. She couldn’t stop watching him want her. Thinking about him holding her felt so good. So foreign, but closer than she realized.

She leans back on the couch and starts to undress herself so that she can see herself the way he dreams of her. What would he do if he could see her like this now? If he could see her as she unbuttons the blouse, opening herself up to the darkness of the room that has been her studio for so many years.

The shutters are closed, even though it was the middle of the day, because these days she finds that the light inspires her to want to paint things she can't paint anymore. The darkness defies the heat. She doesn't think she has ever sat on this couch with her breasts exposed this way. She looks down and again she recognizes that she is desirable. There had been a time in her life when she felt this way. She never would have thought about having a man looking at her nude.Her experiences with men had been in the dark or undercovers. Keeping her shirt on. Taking her handful of clothing into the bathroom to get dressed. She censored herself, too. All of her vulnerable parts were blurred out.

But now she imagines him standing over her. He isn’t here to soothe her or to comfort her. He is here to want her. He sees her nakedness and he presses his mouth to her breast. He is not doing it in a sweet loving way. No. She knows he is not that type of man. He is the type of man who would want to swallow her. She wants to let him.

His hands are not cautious the way his words had been. His hands don’t think twice. They undress her culture and her country from her so that every part of her is nude. And when she is nude, his hands undo her like a loose knot.

She imagines that he is painting her in red. And not just red, however. Yellow. Gold. Orange. Heat. The temperature of these colors. The only color missing is blue. And as he kneels in front of her and pushes himself against her naked legs, she feels all of the colors that he wants to press inside her. Her legs slide open. She wants to be opened by him. She feels the pressure to let him squeeze desire from her. She is damp and warm and ready for him. But will he enter her? Will she let him?

He puts his hands on both sides of her face and holds her. He looks at her. He is not trying to comfort her. He is letting her know that she is now his. At this moment, she will submit. That’s all he has ever wanted from her. That's what she wants. too. She wants to belong to somebody. She has been shrapnel for too long. She wanted someone to make her whole again.

She doesn’t speak a word, but he knows what she wants; Everything but her mouth is a choir. Eyes that relent to him. Eyes that give him permission. Eyes that tell him that everything he wants is everything she will do. His confessed desire unlocks her. As he kisses her, she can feel his tongue so powerfully filling her mouth. She wants him to fill her everywhere. She wants him to breathe life into her. To put his life inside of her so that she can live again.

And so he reaches down and undoes himself and exposes himself. He stands and she instinctively knows that he wants to be inside her mouth. He wants his lust to be inside of her, and he thrusts it there and she knows that she is helpless in a way that makes her feel so useful. So valuable. And so she is. For the first time in a long time she feels prized. She feels like she can have a purpose on this earth, and for this moment her purpose is to please him. With him in her mouth she looks up at him and he looks down at her and the connection is clear. She is a mirror. She is helpless to do anything but reflect every piece of his desire.

The unspoken sentence is clear. He is telling her she is dear. Even though she has not painted in the ways that she once painted, it is obvious that's what he is seeing. As he looks down at her and she gives herself to him, he sees her as every painting she had made before the blue. Before death. Before the oppression. Before her country had fallen apart. And even though it does not erase all of that horror, she is glad that he sees her this way.

He removes himself from her mouth and puts himself between her legs. She feels something there that she has not felt in so long. He enters her. He is now inside of her, and she is full. Having him inside of her feels like life. She feels reborn in color. His desire is a resurrection. Then she wipes the blue from her eyes and sees all the colors in his.

She smiles and opens her eyes. She looks down at her nakedness. She is alone. He was a dream. To mark the occasion with a monument, she pours the red paint down the center of her chest. It races to her tummy and pools in her belly button. It doesn’t stop. Like him, it covers her naked shame. She stands and lets herself drip red. She steps close to the blue mess on the easel, and presses her body into it. When she pulls away, she stares at the red blooming from blue. It is a confirmation.

The canvas is a witness to her fleeting moment of happiness. She lets the red drip down her legs and fill the spaces between her toes. The blue still calls to her, but despite the impossibility of this man, he at least brought her back to color. Blue is a color, but other colors could fill her lungs, too. She picked up a towel and wrapped it around her stained body. There was still some blood left in her. She decides to let it out. It will be a blood letting of warm colors. She turns and heads to the shower, imagining his face. She counts his freckles and wonders what it might be like to kiss a man with such a woolly beard. Ginger men always get her attention. Orange headed vampire. Orange flames. Red-headed lover of color, come back soon.