Best Kind of Broken

41 Pixie

I don’t regret it.

I’ve been so afraid of Levi seeing my scar, so scared that the red reminder of Charity would destroy him, that I failed to realize how healing showing him might be for me. The sight of my scar might have cut into Levi, but it patched up a bleeding piece of my soul that I didn’t think I’d ever get stitched; the part of me that refused to see Charity’s death in Levi’s eyes; the part of me that denied his pain.

So I don’t regret it.

Even now, ten days later, when Levi still won’t look at me or speak to me, I don’t regret it. Charity is dead. I am scarred. Levi is haunted.

These are the real things, the true things.

And the truth is easier to breathe in than the lie. Uglier perhaps. But far less suffocating without the cloud of denial I’ve kept around me all this time. Denial is thick and sweet, and for the past year it filled up my lungs until they threatened to burst. But truth… truth is clean and pure. And yes, it hurts when I inhale it, it hurts to cleanse out the sweet smoke, but breathing out is like new life.

With black paint staining my fingers, I step back from the small canvas I’ve been working on all morning. It’s not perfect. It’s not even close. It’s a mess of gray, with shards of black and slits of white, but it’s what I want to see.

With careful hands, I hang the canvas up to dry beside the three other similar paintings I’ve been working on for the past few days.

Four paintings. One subject. A million unspoken things.