Circus Magic

It was magic. 

No, not the contorting trapeze artists soaring over the sea of top hats, or the cigarette smoke that shrouded the performers in a mystical frame. Not the animals I had never seen before, larger and stranger than any novel had ever dared to describe, painted and coaxed into submission by the whip held by a man in a ridiculous costume. The twinkle that came with the ring leader’s eye was a fox, and the audience was his prey. When he smiled, I swore his teeth were just the slightest bit sharp at the edges. It wasn’t any of the acrobatic flips, or the red and white striped tent surrounding the boisterous crowd in a textural confinement. 

Rather, it was the glow of his eyes. Warm brown with a hint of honey suckle highlights that looked a little bit like the stars. They were ones I had come to memorize. Igniting the dark corner of the tent where he was told to set up his canvas, he was a sight that was supposed to be hidden. Didn’t his bosses know that magic like his...it’s magnetic. You couldn’t hide it. The more you tried, the brighter he shined. Even in that dark corner, huddled behind his canvas, he was the star of the show. I smiled slightly to myself. The star of my show, at least. I could almost see the brightness of his smile glow through the canvas in front of him as he bent down to paint the scene in front of us. It always seemed that way, that he glowed, when he got lost in his wonder. I wanted to dive into him, wanted to see the world the way he did. Every last blade of grass to the crashing of the ocean to the cobblestones on the street. 

A tendon in his forearm flexed as he pulled up the sleeves of his white poet shirt. The way the buttons on the top were undone made me lose my breath. I wondered, could anyone hear it? The way I couldn’t breathe? How still I felt in a sea of chaos? How grounded? 

It was him. It was always him and his painting. Watching him, his painting strokes-everything. That was the magic. 

Everyone thought I brought the binoculars to see the performers better. Louisa figured I had gotten the bug for showmanship, for the high flying stuntman and clown make-up. I let her think that. Easier to have her focus on something other than the way I turned my gaze far to the left, away from the circus. 

Watching him, painting her. It manifested into a magical glow about my painter. 

I knew what I was getting myself into when I agreed to come here tonight. I knew what awaited me. What torments were to be laid before me. And yet, I still came. 

I was a fool for it, but I suppose I had been since the moment I saw him on the forest path those few months ago. A slab of green paint had been wiped under his right eye, like he was so consumed in his painting of the hills beyond that he became a part of the artwork himself. I had caught sight of him on my way home. My hands had tightened on my basket full of fabrics as my feet crunched on a twig. He had then turned to face me for the very first time. 

The feeling of how my face had warmed as he lazily smiled at me still whispered to me in my quiet moments. 

That was the start.

The end came soon enough, but I didn’t want to think about it. Not when I watched his face like that with her, with her perfectly ruffled dress and hair clearly done by a trained maid. Not with her authentic gold encrusted jewelry gracing her ears and chest; the image of dainty, feminine wealth. It was everything I couldn’t be, no matter how hard I tried. She was better than me, more than me, full of life and zeal and access that could give him things I could only dream of. The sooner I realized that, the better.

Then why didn’t I look away?

It gutted me, wrung me dry, and left me cold. But that didn’t mean anything. Not when he brushed his loose black hair out of his face, or the way he made me feel totally seen and utterly invisible all at the same time. It was entrancing.

So, I kept on looking, like an addict I kept looking. I saw her. I saw the way he smirked at her, like he held some sweet little secret between them. I didn’t want to see it, but a part of me, the one deep down that told myself, You should know better, forced me to reconcile with bitter truth. Why did it have to be this way? Never easy, never right, not for me at least. He came alive when he painted her, there was nothing I could do about it. Especially not when I was probably nothing to him. You can’t be a muse if you’re nothing to the artist. 

That thought hit like another kind of pain. 

Not sharp, or vengeful. It was even larger, grander, something else entirely. The way he looked at her. The way he didn’t look at me. I was being crushed, swallowed by the suppressing pressure of the ocean deep to be spit back out into the oxygen-less atmosphere of space. The weight on my heart was heavy, burning like a thousand suns while icicles shot into my vision to disorient and nauseate me. It was searing. It was everything. All consuming. Was I even alive? All I felt inside was otherworldly, grander and more painful than anything I had ever experienced before. It was a different kind of magic.

The magic in me, it was pitch black. Turned that way because I tried to take it from him, from her, when it didn’t belong to me. Taking magic that isn’t your own doesn’t fulfill you, it shatters you, puts you back together, and then finds a new way to tear you apart. 

The crowd around me swelled, boisterous and intoxicated as muscled men in leotards bound into the sky and spun and flew like gravity was just a suggestion.

I dropped the binoculars into my lap and turned my eyes to the men in the sky. My hands felt numb, my head oddly light. Usually a heavy rock in a world of tornadoes, tonight I felt a little like a balloon, just deflated enough that no one would find it useful. 

I hoped more than anything it wouldn’t last. 

The circus men flung at each other from hoops that had been strung from the ceiling. My heart was beating faster, faster, until I swore it would explode. I was better than this, stronger. How could I have been so foolish, after everything I have gone through? Images of the two of us shattered my memory. The faster the performers swirled, blurring my vision, the easier it was to let my eyes glaze over for a moment to remember it. The town square dance, his head back in rambunctious laughter as I beamed at my success in getting him so fully relaxed. The way his shoulders felt as I made him model for a jacket I was sewing for the shop. The way he smiled down at me, and me up at him, before he made fun of me for the way the sewing needles stuck out of my mouth. 

Stop it. That deep part of me told myself, but it was getting harder to listen. 

Him battling an invisible foe with an equally invisible sword while atop a thin stone bridge in the woods. The way the leaves stuck in his hair after he fell and I rolled over in laughter. The time he knocked on my cottage bedroom window, the dusk might cascading around him, to show me some gorgeous fabric he was able to get from his most recent portrait clients. 

There was a tornado around me, one of memory and heartbreak, ripping my soul into pieces. It roared, closing in as the horns and the animal noises of the circus created a chaotic cacophonic cage around me. Above all the noise, the wind and the utter fear of what would happen if I was fully swept up, came the echoing reminder from deep within my gut. I couldn’t stand it anymore. 

He doesn’t love you.

He doesn’t see you that way. 

You’ll only ever be his friend.

The voice in me was more persistent now. In recent months, the term best friend went from sacred to a curse. All I ever wanted was to be seen, truly seen, for all these things swarming inside me. Not who I presented to the world, or what I kept from it. Not for how I looked or what I was or, more often, what I wasn’t. I just wanted to be understood, for once, without having to explain it. The feelings I had for him, I wasn’t even sure I could find enough words in the dictionary to even attempt a way to express them. It was wordless, like his artwork. He had taken his brush and had elegantly dragged it across my vision, creating this masterpiece, the menagerie of moments with him that had made forever feel intoxicating instead of terrifying. It made a bubble form in the pit of chest that grew with each glance my way or soft word he spoke. Sometimes the feelings screamed at me, red hot and devious. Sometimes, they were silent. Like a breeze caressing an empty rocking chair by the window. How was it even possible to tell that to someone, what all that means? It was impossible, at least to me. Even if those three words could manage to encapsulate everything, there was no way I could ever say them. Not with what was on the line. Not with my heart. 

Especially, I reminded myself, since he met Emilia. 

No, my heart would have to hurt with the burden of secrets. It was better than having it shattered by a shot of rejection. 

The ringleader on stage had just returned, corralling the audience into his sparkly snare through his grand gestures, no doubt preparing the crowd for what I assumed would be a spectacular finale. I wasn’t thinking about that though. The storm had dissipated, like my delusions. My senses had since dulled and slowed the movements around me. The cheering crowd, all in their feathered hats and gloved hands holding spectacles, the lantern lit stage with a sea of shapes and an array of colors- all of it was blurry. The only clear thing left was him. 

I had dared look back, and he stood off kilter, wiping one of his brushes, then looked up between his brow. He was the most handsome man I had ever seen. 

 It’s too late. The voice in my scolded, a ring of somberness edged into it’s tone. It was always too late. 

It was hopeless, I knew that. I had always known it. I knew his heart, and it couldn’t belong to me. Yet, that childish notion, that glorious and torturous thing called hope-well, it was all I had. And I hoped, fervently hoped for a sign he loved me at all. It didn’t matter to me if it was romantic, not anymore. I knew that was off the table, had always been. I just needed to know in my heart, in my soul, that he cared. 

Love came in all forms, right? All I needed was a sign that he had some in his heart for me. I prayed that the universe let me ride with the current for once. 

He looked back at his brushes and furrowed his brow. 

----------------

It was the strangest thing. 

There she was, Emilia, celestial in her best outfit. The magenta of her dress oozed class, highlighting her cheeks in a way that brightened up every feature on her. It was all I had ever hoped for, that look she gave me. It was igniting and inspiring, like I could have painted a million pictures of her and never get sick of it. There she was, like a beacon in the sea of circus goers, but a chord snapped inside me. I wanted to forget it, to erase it, but I couldn’t. Emilia, she was classy, wealthy. She flew in the worlds that I did, but her eyes didn’t hold a sea of stories. They were more like glass, showing everything all at once. I kept smiling at her, the way she smiled back at me- I couldn’t help it. But still, it felt...odd. Out of place. It was like I was a stranger in my own skin. Emilia, she was in the world of debutantes and high dining. She lived for the quiet conversations over fine China and polo matches. She loved the world I worked so hard to separate from. I couldn't get it out of my head, that conversation where she had questioned me: Why? She had asked, and I saw it. I saw the concern, the disbelief in her eyes- like I was a blind bird with a broken wing and she would lead me home. 

Ever since the conversation, a heavy rock has sat firmly in my chest, growing with each passing moment. I didn’t belong. I had never belonged. Emilia looked on, and I kept smiling, but a suffocation had taken over. My body was quietly seizing with the pressure I felt. I wasn’t the right person. Not for her, not for my family. Not for anyone. 

That’s when I saw her, watching the show far up in the high section of the audience. The sight of her released a weight in my chest. The kind of weight, I realized, that came when you were not understood.

She did. She always had.

The look on her face, it was...so much. It was like a million thoughts, a million feelings, danced across her brain. I stared for a little moment longer. A sea of stories in those eyes, I thought. Why had I never painted her? For a long few seconds, I took in everything about her, that face I had laughed with so many times. A shudder shimmered over me and I immediately shot my eyes away. It was foolish, truly. I needed to do something, anything, with my hands. I busied myself with my brushes to leave no room for thoughts.

----

He couldn’t explain it, or maybe he didn’t want to, didn’t want to open that door and think about what that second felt like. But if you dug into his brain-into his heart- he could have sworn that just for a moment, the way the light caught on her dark hair...it was magic.