The Girl Who Cries In Technicolor

I know a girl. She cries in Technicolor. First comes the green: lurid, unnerving, the colour of money. She just stands there as tears tumble down her face collecting in puddles on the floor. It stains her face, stinging her eyes. Her face ceased to be skin coloured long ago. Now she looks like the copper statues left out in the parks too long, with their placidity too, their indifference. Occasionally, if you look really closely, you can see shimmering streaks down her neck where renegade drops have found their way. But this is only the beginning.
Next comes the red. Thick like blood with all its composite colours, running into the green and muddying her face. At this point she lowers her head to conceal the shame that she is crying again. She can hear the beatings she used to get, resounding like the beat of the war drum in her head. Rhythmic and repetitive, as the colour continues to pool at her feet. She tried, she really did. But most of the time she felt like a human ink well that had been left to fill and the ink just came flowing over the top, or the bathtub that is left running as the water bubbles over the rim and cascades over the floor.
Then, something happens, something clicks. That cloud of sorrow and introspection disperses until you realise that she is looking directly at you. And she is laughing. A full, joyous, ecstatic laugh, her face a palette full of colour. On top of the omnipresent green are yellows, golden and shimmering, oranges the colour of sunlight on a closed eyelid, purples that nestle against the last remnants of the red and Prussian blues that do not kill, rather they enliven. But you hardly notice it. She stands before you like a goddess finally freed, spirit uplifted, arms reaching out. There is nothing of the pain left in her face. Just pure ecstasy.
For her this moment is fleeting, but for the observer… for the observer. Her image haunts your every step and every autumn shadow could have been her if they could have mastered colour. Her face is that last snatched image as you wake from your dreams and the one you imagine when you close your eyes. She is perfect in her imperfection. And whilst you rejoice as a voyeur, she is, all the time, replaying those sad events over and over and over again. It is the curse of her condition. Being forced to dwell, endlessly.
The one side of her memory, the one reel records everything and the second compartmentalises everything. The anger and the sadness, the abject misery, the humour, the sacrifice, the love. That is why she laughs. The first time around all she sees is a scene, a transaction between beings. But, the second time… she gets the detail. All the colours appear in the same way that a polarising lens makes a grey English afternoon, a blaze of hues. Blues get bluer, reds richer, greens become lush and the browns are lined in silver and gold. It is that instant, and that instant only that she lives for. Within seconds it is past. The colours disappear, as the stains fade on her face and she returns once more to the ashen green that defines her life. There she stands, and she waits until a she can come upon another moment of sadness. And there can be someone to watch. I know a girl who cries in Technicolor.