rain » vkook

twelve

the drought has ended. I paint just like I used to again; my hands are always stained with color. I wasn't this messy; not since the gray-blue night. I used to be too careful. and now I let the paint do what it wants - I only steer its direction, anyway. besides, I feel less like I'm painting with paint and more like I'm painting with me. and I like it.

my studio is doing better. I've gone back to normal hours, and my taehyung collection got featured in the newspaper, so I have a lot more customers.

I feel like something has changed. like my head has shrunk (a little bit, at least) so that it fits and I can look people in the eye now. I speak with more conviction, but my voice has quieted; I'm not shouting in a church anymore.

it's been two months and twenty two days. I still wonder about taehyung and I still talk to the concrete jungle. I'm still not ernest hemingway and I don't think I'll ever be. but that's okay.

my heart still hurts whenever it rains and my skin still aches with the ghost of his memory. I wake up at three in the morning and paint my questions: are you okay? a lake at sunset with the colors crawling out of its waters. where are you? a silhouetted figure standing atop a skyscraper in the middle of a field.

and why did you leave? a rose with a single petal falling away.

of course I still think about him. he was the only person who made me feel that way; who made me feel like I was a genius, like me and him were in on some cosmic joke and we were perfectly ordinary in our extraordinariness. and I think missing him is terrible because he is the most vicious muse I've ever had; telling me that the reason he left was because I wasn't good enough even at the same time he tells me to paint because the inside of my head is wildflowers and colors. not a blankness that is somehow the opposite of emptiness.

I think I miss him so intensely because we only knew each other for such a short time. and yet, in that short time, I developed such loud feelings that I had never felt before. it took only a second for me to become addicted.

but no. taehyung is not a drug. no one is anyone's drug; no one is something so material as a drug. some people are beautiful treasure troves of rich, overflowing emotions and voices and movements. some people are more colorful than anything any artist could ever create. and those people can be anyone. a person can be this supernova to someone but not to someone else. and that's why people become "addicted" to others. taehyung was that person for me.

I wonder if he had any idea. I wonder if anyone has any idea if they are that person for someone else. I wonder why people can't see themselves as who they are; why some people are unhappy with themselves or think only of what's wrong with them. Bodies are not eraser marks or crumpled paper or ripped canvas. Bodies are eraser marks and crumpled paper and ripped canvas turned into a final product of color and emotion and story.

some people are beautiful, and some people are not. some people I paint at ten in the morning with red hands and iron bars across their giant fists. sometimes I stare at his storm cloud face and shake with anger. then I think about taehyung and my anger turns back into that curious aimless sadness. it feels like my heart is being pulled right out of my chest.

I'm tired all the time. I think it's because my subconscious is always searching for taehyung; for him, for the reason he left, anything. a sign that he's even still alive. god, I don't even know that.

my biggest question will always be where did you go?