the street was as dark as our hearts in a cold October that made everyone shiver until they couldn't feel their toes. it hasn't snowed, but the sun had been asleep for years it seemed. the orange glow from flickering street lights fit our complexions like the shade of lipstick your mother liked to wear to the silly school award ceremonies that even we skipped out on. the night was dark and those lights danced across our skin like we were nothing more than two pale canvases. and that makes sense to me because you had always reminded me of an art exhibit. greens and blues and ***** grays with birthmarks and freckles and scars that were sometimes by accident and sometimes not. they had given your display case the perfect amount of little spotlights because I couldn't see a single flaw. every line was perfectly contoured and the texture of you felt perfect against every inch of my body. I had the sudden idea that I could never reach anything better than what I had in the warm crooks of your elbows. my mind became convinced that you were the Mona Lisa to that small town, and I was only a pencil sketch, but display cases always make things look prettier than they seem and lighting can be deceiving if masterminds know how to angle the rays. I was blinded by those pretty display case beams like I was stunned by those walnut avenue street lamps the night we danced in the dark and you told me about how your mother taught you half the constellations before you were five and that my eyes reminded you of the brightest stars that night. but stars always explode and that's what mine did in the art showcase that was so misleading to me from the start of it all. you had a frame as glowing as the gold streaks of Midas. but somehow, wooden splinters came out of a gold frame the afternoon you expressed in angry screams that you were fine, even though I could see the breaking of your glass heart. you were beautiful, more so than dragonfly wings or water color portraits. you were a new genre, we are a new artistic creation and we belong in galleries, locked up tight because we can't trust ourselves not to fall over or shatter or spill our own colors onto beautiful pieces and end up ruining them. you spilt your paint splatters all over me, didn't you? I saw a masterpiece covered in stardust and I tried to touch it, even though it wasn't mine. I put my fingerprints all over that mess of creativity and genius, and it left a mark on me too... you left a mark on me. my hands hurt and my heart ached and I wondered what kind of chemical they put in those acrylic paints, but it wasn't until I backed away, covered in your greens and blues and dusty shades of gray, coughing up all types of maroon, that I read the sign below your breathtaking display case:
    do not touch