Drowning

Skin

          I wanted to be a painter of landscapes. To make people tilt their head at the beauty they normally disregard. I want to be a painter. I looked at my college professor with ambitious eyes. She told me to have a back-up plan. She told me, A lot of talented people aspire to be artists but realistically, it’s not the wisest decision to go into the struggling economy with confidence in something that is more likely to fail. I’m not telling you to give up on your dreams of becoming an artist, just don’t do it with false confidence, or worse, with no plan B. No plan B. No fucking plan B.Oh, did you have a plan B, you fucking imbecilic bitch? You can shove your fucking plan B up your ass, I don’t need your fucking plan B. But instead, I said, Yeah.

          I stared at the blank canvas and its emptiness laughed at me. I laughed back because I was more empty than it. I closed my eyes. I opened them again but the canvas was still empty. I was still emptier. The paintbrushes splintered my hands. The paint stained my skin. The emptiness grew emptier. I stood up and walked away from all the emptiness but the emptiness didn’t turn away from me. It didn’t know how. It followed me. It followed me up the stairs and back down them and it followed me through the kitchen where I didn’t cook or eat or sit down and have a drink because I wasn’t thirsty and because I wasn’t hungry and because I didn’t want to cook. There was emptiness in my hands and on the floor and plastered on the walls.

          I walked until I stood facing the blank canvas once again. I sat down. I stared. It stared back. I looked at the colours. I picked up the tube of yellow and felt its cool and wrinkled skin. I wrapped my fingers around it gently, and then squeezed as hard as I could. But the cap was still on. I wanted the cap to burst and release the bird-like yellow onto my hands, onto the floor, the pallet, the brush, the empty canvas. I watched the yellow paint build up below the cap. What if the paint inside isn’t yellow? I waited and waited for the oily wetness to paint my hands yellow like the sun. I waited for the emptiness to be full. But the cap was still on.