There was something to be said for his clean, porcelain arms, wrapped around me tightly. I remember tracing fragile fingers down his chest, exploring crevasses and lines of skin. I felt every nook and cranny, and he felt all of mine. I had opened myself for him like a flower, and he took and took, and gave and gave. It was this symbiotic relationship, where I showed places of my heart and soul and body that no one had ever touched, seen, or felt. His skin was so pure, so unblemished, and that was why I fell in love with him. Because every time I looked into that godawful mirror, I saw a soul that had been smudged with dirty fingerprints, smeared with blood across my highborn cheekbones, until I had become the lowest, common whore. But he had never been touched, not like that. I never realised that inside his heart, which I endeavoured to hold, there was a soul that had been broken like my flesh had. I never realised.
Until one day, he came home with a tattoo of a heart across his chest. It was placed softly over where his real heart would be, his one of blood and muscle. His inkheart seemed to beat in time with his pulse, and I traced my fingers along the lines of finality. I could almost feel it throb beneath my fingertips. But the worse part was, this heart he had inked, was broken. Inside its confines were all the words that had been thrown at him through many years of pain, that I never knew about—bastard, mother-lover, fag— and none of them were true. But they still pierced and pierced until he could no longer hold them inside his ribcage. That day, everything that was painful spilled out, until it became permanent upon his flesh. I didn’t leave. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t tempted to, because I was. I wanted to run, cry, and find someone who was still white as snow, who had never ever been harmed. I wanted to rub myself against someone whole, hoping this caked mud against my skin would flake off. But I didn’t. I had told him I loved him for who he was. I had never really known who he was, but now I was determined to.
It’s ten thousand years later, or at least it seems that way. Now, we stand together in front of the mirror—wall-length, and nothing is hidden—and we can see everything about one another. He sees the dried blood and tears down my cheek, and I see stained words of pain. But once we have drunk our fill of the painful past, we turn to each other and fall into each other’s arms. There, we find our purity, there, we find out solace. It seems that when you mix dirt with pain, when you combine two of the most desecrated souls, out comes true and pure beauty. In each other’s arms, we are as white as snow.
