A Dance of Lies

by Brittney Arena

“But though you’ve suffered your own fire, child, you won’t always smell of smoke. And yes, it may have burned you,” she tells me, and I lift my gaze. “But scars are powerful things, because they show your resilience. So rise from your ashes, my dear. Do not crumble alongside them.”

He is a study in angles, like a marble statue cut by lines of shadow and sun. I am no painter, but for him, my fingers itch for a brush.

“I am broken,” I say. An admission, or explanation. The only words I can string together. “You are art,” he says in response.

But the shadow disappears a moment later, the light in his eyes returning. “We all have our comforts, Minnow. I wonder if you might be mine.”