Goddess

She was painted in the most florescent of colours but now they have vanished and left her naked in the tones of the colours shadows. The palette God used to create her would have made Claude Monet shed a tear. When she smiled, rays of colours from every end of the spectrum went running in every direction, looking for an untouched part of the canvas on which to leave a mark – and now the marks are indelible charcoal smudges.

With a simple brush of the arm, an unmistakable smear of a golden marigold flower was left. Instead of being the subject of the artist’s canvas, she became it. She didn’t need a paintbrush; she used her own fingertips to draw the colours of life. Despite her intoxicating smile, life had now slipped her by, offering only shadows where colours used to be. Once upon a time dawn teased us on the horizon, the beauty sat on her calico-covered stool waiting for the sunrise to radiate off her and leave an impression onto a world that held its breath. Its pulse raced every morning in anticipation to see her.

The Charcoal Goddess sat clasping an echo. She sat there delicately with her once delicious palms held open, abandoned and derelict. Her bony, depleted fingers spread open revealing parched wrinkled skin that took on the appearance of fine shreds of an anaemic looking rind.

Once her delightful fingers intertwined with ours, it felt so natural and right; as if her hands held the memories of being embraced by a thousand other lifetimes. She looked away for what seemed like just a moment and at that moment her fingers curled like bloodless quotation marks, bent and brittle. Colourless petals of potpourri made of dried marigold flowers – their once colourful life preserved by quotation.

Next to her, placed on a cracked bone china saucer was a mismatched teacup that she sipped, from time to time. The dried leaf of marigold flowers swam, partially saturated by the warm kaleidoscopic water in the cup. The dried and crumbling petals swam in the teacup in an anti-clockwise motion and offered the charcoal Goddess a hint of her. Once upon a time.

If taste could be a collection of colours, once upon a time in a field filled with a kaleidoscope of flowers she was the prettiest marigold flowering petal in the garden. Now, her lacklustre tones only offering a tantalising taste of what was, in an otherwise, colour less world.

Once upon a time, the prettiest petal loved an artist. When he stood next to the marigold flower he saw the world as it was. A beautiful array of colours and shapes. Ideas and formulas. Limitations and openness. Love and fear. It was a canvas that left just enough space for everyone to paint their own story; their own lives caressed onto the whites of the world. Some painted out of the canvas and onto the frames, and some painted off the frames and onto the walls. And then there were those who ran their strokes over and into the lives of many others either ruining their work or creating beauty.

He was a real artist, one who saw the world for how it was supposed to be seen. With an open heart, mind, body, and soul. He judged none and nothing. It was all the same to him; parts of life that were each equal and necessary, the art of the world and now he was sad because the colour of the world had left her and yet he smiled one of those dampened smiles.

It was a smile that tried to control that automatic smile that people get. The happy one that appears for no apparent reason. It exists because some muscles, like the ones that control the mouth, are easier to hide than the other smiles. The more colourful smiles, like the miserable smile and the fear smile or the embarrassed smile and the contempt smile. Perhaps the artist’s dampened smile was a lot like the Goddess’s smile? And even though she was now colour less, for the artist, absence of colour only made his heart grow fonder. And with every day that he thought about his pretty petal, his Goddess, his dampened smile would change to a more wistful and joyous smile.

The artist knew something that most people avoided. That without pain, how could you know a pure, unadulterated joy?

He drew a deep breath and felt happiness flow over his body viscerally like the viscous nectar of a sweet tasting flower. He was content that he had all three things that gave him this colour, in an otherwise, colourless world.

He had someone to love, the Goddess.

He had something to hope for, to be with the girl of his dreams one day.

He had something to do.

And with that, the artist proceeded to do something. It was a remarkable gesture that would give his Goddess her colour back. He wanted to paint her with salubrious bold strokes of vivid shades and hues of painterly patinas filled with fluorescent, sensual, and sultry polychromatic strokes of genius.

He removed a small white envelope from his jacket’s inside pocket. Written on the envelope was a beautiful collection of letters crafted together with hand-loved calligraphy. The words on the envelope read ‘Marigold Flower’.

Inside the envelope were a handful of small grey elongated seeds. With his index finger, he dragged it through the moist, warm soil before him, forming a narrow, shallow trench in the earth. The artist did this three times. Each trench was exactly thirty inches long, the same age as the Goddess.

When the first thirty-inch shallow trench was dug, he whispered ‘love’.

With the second thirty-inch shallow trench, he exhaled the word ‘hope’.

And as the third thirty-inch trench was excavated the artist’s quiet voice said ‘desire’.

Carefully, the artist pinched the envelope open and meticulously poured the seeds into each trench gently, evenly, and lovingly. The artist was mindful of each seed's wish to flower and flourish. They too had hopes and desires. He maneuvered the soil back over the exposed trench, covering the seeds that had been sewn into the ground and he benevolently patting the soil here, here, and just over here.

The artist stood back to venerate his freshly sewn garden. The new garden plot formed a small mound and the artist’s eyes followed the contour of this mound.

Along its length, and following it to a cross at the end of the mound. It was a simple white cross that was placed perpendicular and level to the mound before it. The artist pondered for a moment, ‘I always thought love was shaped like a heart but now I know that its shape is more like a cross.’

On the cross was a handwritten epitaph. It was the same wispy, beautifully crafted calligraphy that had been written on the envelope that had been sitting in the artist’s pocket and the words read,

Marigold Louloudi

12 April 1931 – 04 August 2021.

Flowers do not worry about how they are going to bloom. They just open and turn towards the light and that makes them beautiful. My eyes will always look for the colours of your bouquet. Until our love blossoms again.

A deceased elderly man was found the next day. His arms were draped over a small white cross. His limp body was blanketed by a bed of mature wildflowers. Each flower, a beautiful hue of gold with varying intensity pointing towards the sun. The flowers bathed in the sun’s rays, echoing its golden, warm radiance. A joyous smile was affixed to his face. Clutched in his hand was a small white envelope and inside the envelope was a few small, grey elongated seeds and a note written with the most beautifully crafted calligraphy.

It read, ‘I will be the gladdest thing under the sun. I will touch a hundred flowers but not pick one except the golden Marigold flower.’