The Truth Has Scars and Needs a Coat of Paint

He has a personality the size of mainland China. A heart twice that size, if either could be quantified. Everyone he knows loves him except the one he loves the most. She tells her friends, "Why would I love him? Look how much he does for me now. How could he do more?" 

Each day he wakes up dreaming she'll return. Each night he knows his dream has not come true. He hopes for better the next morning. 

His friends don't want to say anything. They know that if they did he would be sad. The truth has scars and needs a coat of paint. Why won't anyone do something? They've all learned to tell themselves, "He has to want this change of heart; we can't do it for him." Same convenient excuse for those who face a drunk and lack the courage to confront. Convenience and comfort keep the world complicit. 

One morning on a whim he glances in the mirror and recognizes a young face hidden behind the wiser eyes. He feels the urge to protect that child and learns he is inside him. The child begins to cry. The man he has become decides to rescue that innocent smile and polish it to match this moment. 

He leaves the house, and people notice a different expression in his eyes. Freed of shackles, freed of myth, as if a rehearsal for another life, the same life that he almost lost. 

He stops dreaming and begins to forge another dream, a softness, a younger self. A loved one from his heart.

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