Once there was a young artist who suffered a terrible shyness.
She spent her hours in blank pages filling the emptiness with lines and curves coaxed
into graphite photos.
Lonely days inched into lonely years like growing links of
a chain. Her isolation grew atop stacks of her unseen body of work. She glanced
over unfinished landscapes. Portraits of forgotten strangers. City skylines
only seen in books. Life explored from a room. She picked up a discarded page.
It held eyes. They were small, round, and unfinished. She added a new line but immediately
erased it. She then added a soft curve where a mouth might be, staring at it
for a long moment. Then a touch of shading. Then another line. Then another. The
outline of a face grew until a child’s bright face smiled up at her from the
tip of her pencil. She covered her face to shield him from her falling tears.
A child. Her
child.
Toys and games and gifts. The laughter of two heard
through the voice of one. A procession of holidays and seasons spent with her
boy. The days of fast, confident lines were gone. Her joints ached and twisted having
become abstractions of their former shape. Some time ago she had fashioned an
album of their favorite moments together. She looked through it on days when
she could not grasp the pencil or hold her hand still. When this became most
days, she did not recall. Their time together was coming to an end. Her and her
boy. She was withering while he still sprang over puddles and stomped in mud.
He still rushed to show her a new drawing of his own. He still hugged her tight
when it was time to sleep. The weight of so many years alone were coming to an
end.
She suddenly trembled. Her thin frame shook in the grip
of a realization. So many years alone were coming to end for her, but they were
about to start for him. Her little
boy was inheriting her life. Worse. He’d forever be a child left alone. She
wept. She wept for him and for her and at the pain they would share. What could
she do? She imagined her boy trapped in the last image crafted by her ruined
hands. She cringed and wept harder. What could be done? She gathered her album
close. It felt small, like him. She reached out and plucked a page from a
nearby stack and jammed it between her and the album. Then another. Then
handfuls, frantically pulling them in tightly around the album until the bulk
was almost too much to hold. She clutched the wrinkling pages close. She sat this
way until her strength failed spilling the pages and the album around her. She
looked at it all feeling its absence and the growing coolness on her chest. She
reached out a trembling hand and pulled the album back to her. A shade warmth
returned to her, but not enough. She opened the album. Her boy sat upon a tall,
proud horse. His cowboy hat was too large forcing him to hold it above his eyes
to wave at her. She smiled back turning the pages of his little life. What can I do?
Once there was a young artist who suffered a terrible
shyness. She spent her years in blank pages filling the emptiness with a boy of
lines and curves and shades. Her very last days and minutes, though, were spent
on a portrait of a man with his family. He had a kind, but resolute face. Close
to him stood his wife, straight and proud. The couple were flanked by two children
who wore trouble in their grins. No one knew it, but they had their
grandmother’s eyes.
