half drawn faces...

I gritted my teeth, and shielded myself against the cold, my fingers too numb to work anymore. Tears poured from my eyes as perhaps blood would from an open wound…yet blood flows for a reason. I shut my eyes tight, drew my legs against my chest, my chin resting on my knees and I rocked myself… softly to and fro, almost dreading the moment when long forgotten, dreaded memories would return to haunt me again. It was time they would arrive… the painting is finished… ready to be framed…and I kept softly rocking to and fro… that’s what ma did when I was young…

The wind shall whisper for you my child… and soothe you when distressed…your tears will cool their warmth when the breeze blows softly against your cheek…

Softly rocking to and fro…to and fro… I did not want to plunge into the depths of despair again… I did not want to feel its icy-cold grip on my neck… rocking to and fro still…
Ma… she’d hold me warm against her and pat so softly on my back…

The wind shall whisper for you my child…she whispered.

And then the silence was shattered by another voice…

Worthless creature he hissed…my child…he spat…to be a painter?! Never…never…

And I rocked on…my pale red shawl now turned crimson…a steady drip drip changed its hue…

Let her be what she wants to... she pleaded for me.

I wanted to paint…perhaps to escape the reality of this drab existence…to paint my canvas the way I could never colour life… I would paint skies of azure… golden eyes… winding lanes going nowhere… a lady’s face half sketched…

Never! She’d be a doctor… she’d be my dream… I have so many dreams yet to fulfill…he had shouted.

My faces are still obscure… despondent eyes…half drawn… masked faces… lurid lips…

Throw that cursed easel into the fire… and he destroyed my brushes that day.

Softly rocking to and fro…

The room seemed to have shrunk around me…stifling me… the single window still wide open…there I keep my colours, beside the window… my easel and a painting yet not dry.


I remained sitting there for a long time…and then I heard my labored breathing ease… and a sliver of light crossed the room… I stopped rocking then… and reached out towards my painting… a part of my soul encased in its layered colours… black…grey…blue…

Morning brought with it a fresh wave of sanity… panic and despair seemed to have disappeared with the stars that have always been deceptive to me… stars that misled… I wrapped the painting in crisp new paper and ready it stood to be framed.

I was free now… at least until I finished another piece… I knew that this depression would return in an even more appalling form next time… it happened every time I finished a painting…as soon as I rested my brush… as soon as there remained no more strokes I could confer upon my canvas…