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Description
Pictures lined the walls of this darkened art studio, the paint strokes making gentle ripples so tender to the touch. But I didn't dare feel the canvases; my paranoid fears told me the soft-looking portraits would fall apart if I did such a thing. Coarse painting strokes, the flick of the brush bristles, flowers coming from the simple movements of a brush tipped with paint.

Faces appeared so unwillingly to themselves, though under the force of the master—the artist—they came into being as the solid, unmoving creations bound by the cloth. Sad should be the faces in the paintings. Those joyous, gay smiles should not exist there, as trapped as they are. Can paintings not feel sorrow? Can paintings not feel hurt? Pain? Misery? Must all these abominable creations have such gleeful expressions?

I lifted the brush, as unwilling as I was, and took it to the canvas, paint not staining the bristles as it normally would. I imagined a sad face, a sorrowful face; a countenance of utter anguish and pleading sorrow wishing for death flashed before me, and I had to acknowledge that I appreciated it. It would be a masterpiece, if anyone would dare to create it, but none could. A woeful sigh came from me, hot breath pouring over cool air, making a wisp of smoke that wasn't smoke at all.

The unbearable irony of it all! Such a woeful artist as myself forced to create such happy monstrosities as these! They come not from my soul, my heart, or my feelings! They are the proof of such a bitter entanglement I suffer! They are objects of my mind that bring me such displeasure that I rue the moment I was first blessed with the ability to see the smiling faces that I glimpse day after damned day!

Such horrid moments are these in which I am told what to paint, what to draw, what to write! And I cannot stop myself. The drive to create my art has me hiding beneath it. I am paid for my services and give my employer a gentle smile, an empty smile.

Somewhere, deep within my bitter cold heart, I could sense that they knew. They were aware of my discontent and my anguish, but they said naught about it. My agonies are my own, they concluded, and offered no condolences. I've turned bitter from these gestures that are really not that, but the absence of them. They told me to bear my own problems without saying a word, so silent they were in their seeming ignorance, which was truly not ignorance at all, but a neglect.

"Incompetent bastards," I spat as I threw down the brush and drew a pencil from the table beside me. Newspapers torn asunder were scattered at my feet, protection for the hardwood floors beneath me. I shouldn't have been wearing socks, especially white ones, but my concern was not with such trivial matters. My hand lashed to the table and picked a pencil sharpener from among the many tubes of paint, scatters of pencils, and a seemingly misplaced TV remote control.

Such a plain table I used, wooden with a cracked fourth leg. I needed to be careful not to completely shatter the wood; it was only held steady by a few thin wrappings of duct tape. The silvery form of it gleamed against the moonlight pouring in through the only open and unshaded window in my apartment.

Such bright nights I have seen in this city of nighttime lights and buildings made far out of proportion, this centuries-old settlement that's no longer a colony. New York City. 'I hate it here,' I've told myself time and time again, but I really don't. I just hate the people. Damned be the lot of them.

Poking the pencil with the charcoal center into the sharpener, I chewed idly on a piece of bubble gum that had long since lost its flavor. I roughly twisted the pencil, feeling a harsh crunch of the blade carving at the wood. Little bits of charcoal dust flew into the air. I blew at them, making them scatter.

Black on white, and a picture appeared. With slow, gentle strokes, I fell into a haze of concentration, disregarding everything happening around me. Someone could break down the door and steal everything from this apartment and I wouldn't realize it; or I wouldn't until I woke from my daze and took a gander around. A very good reason why all that was in this apartment was a wooden crate used as a makeshift table, the breaking stand beside the canvas rack, cheap art supplies, a TV not worth stealing, and of course the paintings I've done, but couldn't sell.

I stopped drawing when I came to the lips. A smile? No. I couldn't. Not again. But I had to. Smiling portraits were all that people bought. Dolls could pout and cry and silently whine, but the paintings that buyers adorned their halls with had to have smiles. Such contradictory personae. People make everything but sense; at least, in my eyes, they do.

After a sad, sad sigh, I curved the lips upward at the edges, making that horrid smile that I so despised. It's only a sketch, a guideline on where to place the eternal paint. From the lips, I moved to drawing the hair, a wavy creation in the latest modern style. I hated the trends too. I was starting to hate everything about this painting that had yet to become a painting.

A cute little blonde child with a pair of braids pouring from the sides of her head glistened on the canvas. She sat on a bed, leaving enough room for someone to lay down with her. Within her lap was the head of a sleeping mother; so soft were her lips, so stylish her hair, so pleasant her smile. "Sleeping mother, crying child..." A smile bloomed on my lips as I painstakingly sketched the tears falling from the girl's eyes. "Your mother is to never wake up, says the doctor." The background I'd chosen died by the hand of my eraser, and I traced on the vision of a hospital room—a solitary, woeful place of death and disease.

Blowing a thick bubble with my flavorless gum, I threw the pencil back to the table, hearing the tip break off, and picked up a tube of paint. I smeared a blob onto a pallet, then another from a second tube of paint. I continued doing this until I had five colors—red, blue, yellow, white, and black. I blew another bubble, letting it pop right outside my mouth, and sucked the gum back to my lips before spitting it out, into a trash can.

'My soul. My life. My love. My existence.' I revelled in the feel of knowing my art, of feeling the brush doing my bidding and allowing the canvas a sad face. One sad face. The other is hollow, a smile that meant nothing. This body that shall never awake from its woeful slumber, even if it never had an existence to begin with. This child, this orphaned girl, shall know pain, shall know torment, shall know the bittersweet existence that is life.

The cute little blonde braids fell over a blue T-shirt, just barely brushing the black jeans covering her legs and waist. The mother's head sat on those jeans, one of the braids falling behind her head. The hospital room was only lit by the fluorescent bulbs outside in the hallway that was seen through the open door, their radiance pouring generously into the dark chamber of death and loneliness.

The white room seemed gray with the lack of lighting, though it didn't matter to the child. Her saddened eyes rested on her mother, the dead face that she could only half see. The child's eyes were a stunning azure, large and watery. 'Cry, little child, cry. You have no more than five years and your mother has left you forever.'

The tops of the mother's breasts could be seen before they were shrouded by the hospital gown. So white was her skin, even with the shadows to rouge it. Her lips, her dead lips, were a wonderfully ashen-violet color. They were only barely open to reveal white teeth, though they, like her skin, were shadowed. Her brown hair fell into her eyes, her closed eyes that would never open again. Such smooth, silky hair...so thin, though.

The dead woman's cheeks were stained with tears from the little girl. The little girl wept silently, never to tell another soul of how she was so tormented, never to relieve her internal woes with the voice of another, the empathy of another. No matter how she'd long to confide, it wasn't an option. 'Bear your own hardships, for others bear their own.' Those tears slipped slowly down, covering the rosy cheeks of the little girl, dampening stray hairs that would, as the girl grew older, become brown like her mother's.

The azure eyes would be framed by glasses. A brown ring would appear around each pupil. Fingernails would grow longer, begging for care, but wouldn't receive very often. Hair would be cut again and again, being slightly less than shoulder length at the age of twenty-seven. Messy hair, layered and disheveled, but not unmanageable. Callused hands would emerge from the ashes of such delicate fingers as those of that child in the painting. Muscles strengthening, though would be nothing like they would be had the child been male. Taller child, tall woman. Yet still short.

My hands fell to my sides as I finish with the paints, the pallet and brush falling from my grip. Paint splashed to the newspapers and my white socks. The brush clattered to the floor before resting against my right foot, then rolling to the floor. The paint was drying on the canvas as I watched it. Soft colors. Dark colors. Hard colors. Bright colors. ...no...no bright colors. Just soft, dark, and hard.

Tears began to fall from my mellow azure eyes as I gazed at the vision of myself as a child. 'Mother...how I've missed you. How I've forgotten. How I've shunned you.' I shook my head sadly. "Now, I remember." An anger flowed through me suddenly.

With a fierce growl, I dashed to the table-crate and threw it to its side, then pried it open. Within was a duffel bag. I hauled a can of hair spray out and plucked out a box of matches. With a bitter rage, I doused the painting with hair spray and kicked it to the ground. I struck a match and threw it onto the canvas. "I don't want to remember her," I spat. "She left me. She left me!" Tears cascaded down my cheeks and I sat on the floor, surrounded by the newspapers. They would burn...and I would burn with them. "You left me. And now I...I am nothing."

With my eyes drifting shut, a smile blossomed on my lips. "Mother...I'll be with you soon. I'll be that little girl, sitting in the hospital. Only this time, you'll get better and you won't leave me. You won't leave me."

I had covered my bitter memories for too long, forgot my mother for too long, and now I'd join her again. Flames licked my flesh, but I was numb...so very numb. My skin was turning black, and my hair was becoming a singed mass of wiry strands that didn't deserve a name.

I had no name. My mother had no name. I was a faceless artist, talking to everyone through words that, in all honesty, were never spoken. These word were never spoken. And I was never born. My mother died before I had the chance to live...

Description
Pictures lined the walls of this darkened art studio, the paint strokes making gentle ripples so tender to the touch. But I didn't dare feel the canvases; my paranoid fears told me the soft-looking portraits would fall apart if I did such a thing. Coarse painting strokes, the flick of the brush bristles, flowers coming from the simple movements of a brush tipped with paint.

Faces appeared so unwillingly to themselves, though under the force of the master—the artist—they came into being as the solid, unmoving creations bound by the cloth. Sad should be the faces in the paintings. Those joyous, gay smiles should not exist there, as trapped as they are. Can paintings not feel sorrow? Can paintings not feel hurt? Pain? Misery? Must all these abominable creations have such gleeful expressions?

I lifted the brush, as unwilling as I was, and took it to the canvas, paint not staining the bristles as it normally would. I imagined a sad face, a sorrowful face; a countenance of utter anguish and pleading sorrow wishing for death flashed before me, and I had to acknowledge that I appreciated it. It would be a masterpiece, if anyone would dare to create it, but none could. A woeful sigh came from me, hot breath pouring over cool air, making a wisp of smoke that wasn't smoke at all.

The unbearable irony of it all! Such a woeful artist as myself forced to create such happy monstrosities as these! They come not from my soul, my heart, or my feelings! They are the proof of such a bitter entanglement I suffer! They are objects of my mind that bring me such displeasure that I rue the moment I was first blessed with the ability to see the smiling faces that I glimpse day after damned day!

Such horrid moments are these in which I am told what to paint, what to draw, what to write! And I cannot stop myself. The drive to create my art has me hiding beneath it. I am paid for my services and give my employer a gentle smile, an empty smile.

Somewhere, deep within my bitter cold heart, I could sense that they knew. They were aware of my discontent and my anguish, but they said naught about it. My agonies are my own, they concluded, and offered no condolences. I've turned bitter from these gestures that are really not that, but the absence of them. They told me to bear my own problems without saying a word, so silent they were in their seeming ignorance, which was truly not ignorance at all, but a neglect.

"Incompetent bastards," I spat as I threw down the brush and drew a pencil from the table beside me. Newspapers torn asunder were scattered at my feet, protection for the hardwood floors beneath me. I shouldn't have been wearing socks, especially white ones, but my concern was not with such trivial matters. My hand lashed to the table and picked a pencil sharpener from among the many tubes of paint, scatters of pencils, and a seemingly misplaced TV remote control.

Such a plain table I used, wooden with a cracked fourth leg. I needed to be careful not to completely shatter the wood; it was only held steady by a few thin wrappings of duct tape. The silvery form of it gleamed against the moonlight pouring in through the only open and unshaded window in my apartment.

Such bright nights I have seen in this city of nighttime lights and buildings made far out of proportion, this centuries-old settlement that's no longer a colony. New York City. 'I hate it here,' I've told myself time and time again, but I really don't. I just hate the people. Damned be the lot of them.

Poking the pencil with the charcoal center into the sharpener, I chewed idly on a piece of bubble gum that had long since lost its flavor. I roughly twisted the pencil, feeling a harsh crunch of the blade carving at the wood. Little bits of charcoal dust flew into the air. I blew at them, making them scatter.

Black on white, and a picture appeared. With slow, gentle strokes, I fell into a haze of concentration, disregarding everything happening around me. Someone could break down the door and steal everything from this apartment and I wouldn't realize it; or I wouldn't until I woke from my daze and took a gander around. A very good reason why all that was in this apartment was a wooden crate used as a makeshift table, the breaking stand beside the canvas rack, cheap art supplies, a TV not worth stealing, and of course the paintings I've done, but couldn't sell.

I stopped drawing when I came to the lips. A smile? No. I couldn't. Not again. But I had to. Smiling portraits were all that people bought. Dolls could pout and cry and silently whine, but the paintings that buyers adorned their halls with had to have smiles. Such contradictory personae. People make everything but sense; at least, in my eyes, they do.

After a sad, sad sigh, I curved the lips upward at the edges, making that horrid smile that I so despised. It's only a sketch, a guideline on where to place the eternal paint. From the lips, I moved to drawing the hair, a wavy creation in the latest modern style. I hated the trends too. I was starting to hate everything about this painting that had yet to become a painting.

A cute little blonde child with a pair of braids pouring from the sides of her head glistened on the canvas. She sat on a bed, leaving enough room for someone to lay down with her. Within her lap was the head of a sleeping mother; so soft were her lips, so stylish her hair, so pleasant her smile. "Sleeping mother, crying child..." A smile bloomed on my lips as I painstakingly sketched the tears falling from the girl's eyes. "Your mother is to never wake up, says the doctor." The background I'd chosen died by the hand of my eraser, and I traced on the vision of a hospital room—a solitary, woeful place of death and disease.

Blowing a thick bubble with my flavorless gum, I threw the pencil back to the table, hearing the tip break off, and picked up a tube of paint. I smeared a blob onto a pallet, then another from a second tube of paint. I continued doing this until I had five colors—red, blue, yellow, white, and black. I blew another bubble, letting it pop right outside my mouth, and sucked the gum back to my lips before spitting it out, into a trash can.

'My soul. My life. My love. My existence.' I revelled in the feel of knowing my art, of feeling the brush doing my bidding and allowing the canvas a sad face. One sad face. The other is hollow, a smile that meant nothing. This body that shall never awake from its woeful slumber, even if it never had an existence to begin with. This child, this orphaned girl, shall know pain, shall know torment, shall know the bittersweet existence that is life.

The cute little blonde braids fell over a blue T-shirt, just barely brushing the black jeans covering her legs and waist. The mother's head sat on those jeans, one of the braids falling behind her head. The hospital room was only lit by the fluorescent bulbs outside in the hallway that was seen through the open door, their radiance pouring generously into the dark chamber of death and loneliness.

The white room seemed gray with the lack of lighting, though it didn't matter to the child. Her saddened eyes rested on her mother, the dead face that she could only half see. The child's eyes were a stunning azure, large and watery. 'Cry, little child, cry. You have no more than five years and your mother has left you forever.'

The tops of the mother's breasts could be seen before they were shrouded by the hospital gown. So white was her skin, even with the shadows to rouge it. Her lips, her dead lips, were a wonderfully ashen-violet color. They were only barely open to reveal white teeth, though they, like her skin, were shadowed. Her brown hair fell into her eyes, her closed eyes that would never open again. Such smooth, silky hair...so thin, though.

The dead woman's cheeks were stained with tears from the little girl. The little girl wept silently, never to tell another soul of how she was so tormented, never to relieve her internal woes with the voice of another, the empathy of another. No matter how she'd long to confide, it wasn't an option. 'Bear your own hardships, for others bear their own.' Those tears slipped slowly down, covering the rosy cheeks of the little girl, dampening stray hairs that would, as the girl grew older, become brown like her mother's.

The azure eyes would be framed by glasses. A brown ring would appear around each pupil. Fingernails would grow longer, begging for care, but wouldn't receive very often. Hair would be cut again and again, being slightly less than shoulder length at the age of twenty-seven. Messy hair, layered and disheveled, but not unmanageable. Callused hands would emerge from the ashes of such delicate fingers as those of that child in the painting. Muscles strengthening, though would be nothing like they would be had the child been male. Taller child, tall woman. Yet still short.

My hands fell to my sides as I finish with the paints, the pallet and brush falling from my grip. Paint splashed to the newspapers and my white socks. The brush clattered to the floor before resting against my right foot, then rolling to the floor. The paint was drying on the canvas as I watched it. Soft colors. Dark colors. Hard colors. Bright colors. ...no...no bright colors. Just soft, dark, and hard.

Tears began to fall from my mellow azure eyes as I gazed at the vision of myself as a child. 'Mother...how I've missed you. How I've forgotten. How I've shunned you.' I shook my head sadly. "Now, I remember." An anger flowed through me suddenly.

With a fierce growl, I dashed to the table-crate and threw it to its side, then pried it open. Within was a duffel bag. I hauled a can of hair spray out and plucked out a box of matches. With a bitter rage, I doused the painting with hair spray and kicked it to the ground. I struck a match and threw it onto the canvas. "I don't want to remember her," I spat. "She left me. She left me!" Tears cascaded down my cheeks and I sat on the floor, surrounded by the newspapers. They would burn...and I would burn with them. "You left me. And now I...I am nothing."

With my eyes drifting shut, a smile blossomed on my lips. "Mother...I'll be with you soon. I'll be that little girl, sitting in the hospital. Only this time, you'll get better and you won't leave me. You won't leave me."

I had covered my bitter memories for too long, forgot my mother for too long, and now I'd join her again. Flames licked my flesh, but I was numb...so very numb. My skin was turning black, and my hair was becoming a singed mass of wiry strands that didn't deserve a name.

I had no name. My mother had no name. I was a faceless artist, talking to everyone through words that, in all honesty, were never spoken. These word were never spoken. And I was never born. My mother died before I had the chance to live...