Picture

Another 300 word submission for my Creative Writing class

‘Picture’

Months from now, you find it again. You’ve hidden it away for so long, tucked it away like a small indiscretion to be forgotten. You sit on your bed with a girl, strumming that old guitar melancholically like you always do when you’re in a mood. She finds it and holds it up, her fingers tracing over the dog-eared edges.

You realise that the fingers holding it are no longer stained with ink and pastel dust �" in fact, they’re clean and probably longer and slender, graceful in a way my own clumsy ones never were. They’re painted a beautiful shade of some colour that you don’t know the name of, but I would. A colour that I would never put on mine. And her hair isn’t quite the right shade of brown and her eyes don’t crinkle at the edges when she smiles. Her face is spotless, her clothes neatly pressed and cut for her figure, yet her lips are painted the wrong shade of red. In fact, you’re not sure it’s even red.

She asks about it and the only words you can say, the only explanation that you will ever be able to offer her is that it’s someone you knew once. Perhaps you’ll even say that she’s an old friend, someone you knew when you were young and reckless. It might not suffice to satisfy her curiosity, but, then again, she’s prudent and considerate enough not to pry further.

Something you know very well I was never capable of.