The First Time...

The first time I saw him, every colour in my head was clear. As clear as the clean sand against the dark rock under shallow coastal waters, or the newborn air you feel on top of a cliff.

 

Ever since I was a child, I wanted to do something creative. I bought paints, easels, crayons and brushes and pastels, messed up the dining table and wooden floors, in a search of something to create.

 

But I met him, and I finally found it - I wanted to create something perfect. I saw it all so clearly! We both would be together until we grew grey and withered, in a little mini-mansion with dogs and kids running around laced with the stress of getting them to school on time, so I put that image on canvas and called it "Mine".

 

He told me to sell it, so I refused - why sell the happiest thing I created? It was so perfect. The blends of green and blue in the sea with the whites and brows and greens of the cliff side, and the house was just right.

 

But I wasn't in the picture. I looked closer and the kids were there, the beach was there, he was there... but so was someone else.

Another guy.

 

I remember...

I caught them. I caught them, together, in the act.

"It's not what you think," he told me, and begged me not to sell the painting. My painting. "I can change"...

 

And like that, I sold it. Selling it felt like cutting out a disease: it hurts and it bleeds but if I keep it, it will consume me.

Now that painting has become someone else's life.