The next few days I focus on creating my portfolio, finishing off the prints left on my camera. Then I spend hours curled up in my favorite chair, drawing in my sketchbook, getting lost in each moment I create.
Dom is the best as he brings me food, making sure I eat before he watches me work in the quiet of our apartment.
"How are you getting on?" he asks, as I clear up my drawing equipment, my hands aching from the long process.
"Twenty-three. Fifteen photographs, eight drawings."
"Do you need more?"
"A few. Maybe two or three more drawings. And one final piece."
"What kind?"
I hesitate, not sure how to explain. "Something that shows us. Not literally us, and nothing identifiable, but something that captures what we are together."
"Do you have any ideas?"
“Yes, but I don’t want to give it away. It’s a surprise.”
“Fine by me, baby. Show the world what we are without showing them who we are."
"Exactly."
Later that night when Dom is asleep, I start the final piece.
I use a different method which I have been experimenting with over the past few months. Charcoal. It's gonna be a large charcoal drawing, bigger than anything else in the portfolio. The paper is expensive, archival quality, the kind that will last for decades. It’s meant as a statement piece.
So I draw us…not our faces or identities. But our essence.
A man's hand wrapped around a woman's throat in a firm, possessive manner. The woman's hand is on his wrist, not trying to pull away, but holding him there and accepting what he gives. Their bodies are pressed together, intimate and violent at once.
The darkness we share, rendered in charcoal and shadow. I work on it for three days straight, obsessing over every detail. The tension in his fingers. The curve of her neck. The way their bodies fit together like pieces of the same puzzle.
When I finally finish, I step back and look at it.
I love it beyond words. It’s the truth of who we are and in some ways it feels too personal to share, but it’s too magnificent not to.
This is who we are, two people bound together by the truth everyone else is too afraid to see. I pin it to the wall and go find Dom.
He's in the living room, scrolling through his phone, no doubt looking for more inspiration. When he sees my expression, he sets the phone aside.
"You’ve finished?" he asks.
"Yeah. Come see."
He follows me to the darkroom and stops in the doorway when he sees the drawing. For a long moment, he doesn't say anything, before he grabs my hand and squeezes it tightly.
"This is us," he says quietly.
"You like it?"
"I fucking love it. It’s really us.”
He turns me around and lifts me as I wrap my legs around his waist, carrying me to the bedroom. He lays me down with care onto the mattress, his eyes never leaving mine.
"I need to claim you," he says.
"Do it."
