The Artist

Beautiful, delicate, fragile, angelic, and perfect. Every time I look at her, the adjectives swim through my mind. But sometimes I catch a glimpse of the dark shadows in her blue eyes, and I am afraid. I see the latency of her macabre desires and I freeze, longing to bury my fingers in your perverse fantasies.

And yet, I cannot bring myself to approach you. Your existence is so overwhelming that it blinds me; my feet stumble and my voice fails. I am left with few options but to turn you into colors. I suppose that is how I might finally crack the code of your full existence.

I will turn you into art. Into an object of worship, locking your essence within beautiful, precise brushstrokes. In doing so, I would understand why your smile is so precious; I would comprehend what lies behind those sky-blue circles under your eyes. I would decipher why you sigh at dawn and why you hate the color yellow.

In the museum of misfortune, I suppose, I could exhibit you. My most famous work, the most vivid canvas, the most brilliant painting in the world. People would ask me where I found the inspiration to create something so beautiful, warm, full of life, and dazzling. I will give a brief smile and say: nature gave me this painting, perfect in its autumnal joy. No one would understand what I mean, but you—my most perfect work—you will know.

I will make you immortal, whether you want it or not. You will be eternal, even if you hate me.

Strangers will come trying to understand (you), and others will come to appreciate (you). I will die, and you will continue to illuminate others, blinding them with your silent beauty, offering them a fleeting refuge with your chestnut colors. There will be no one who does not lay an offering before your blue eyes.

Someone (not I) will study you with a clinical eye and understand you. They will decipher your codes, your silences, your reproaches, your beautiful sad eyes, your sunsets, your pain, and your love too. They will release you from the canvas, turning you into a theory to be shared throughout classrooms.

But not me. I will never be able to comprehend you. So I will make you my greatest work. I will make you immortal. I will bind you to me. You will be my object, and I, the worshipper.

I will leave you in a glass vessel, far from me, and I will admire you in eternal, distant silence.