The Raven - larry au

One - Sunsets

I am used to scrubbing paint off my hands until they are the same red I used to paint the setting sun, so it is strange when my hands are clean of all traces of paint. The sunsets . . . they stopped working as soon as they started. I thought it would be a cool thing to paint them, but everyone paints sunsets. And I want to be more original. 

Without the paint coloring my hands, my morning routines go by much faster. I can stop waking up so early, I guess. Because I know for a fact I won't be painting sunrises. Those are overdone too. There is nothing I want to paint that hasn't been done a million times. Originality. It's a true struggle to try and be original when the worlds been around for over a billion years. 

I have these thoughts while showering. Most boys my age, according to my friend Scott, spend this much time in the shower to do . . . things with themselves, but I use this time to think of what I can do. What I can paint. I haven't been thinking of good ideas lately. Maybe I should masturbate in the shower like normal boys. It might do me some good. 

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On my way to school, I smoke. I don't smoke often, only when I have a block in my head, keeping my creativeness inside. My mum doesn't know I smoke. She lets me do my own thing, and I let her do hers. The only reason I live with her is because there's only a year until I turn eighteen, and my dad hates the smell of paint. I'd rather paint than go live with my sisters and dad. They got the house, due to having more children living there. And my mum was fine with it. She needed a new start. 

The divorce came out of nowhere, from my point of view. Apparently my mom had been having an affair, and my dad was done with her shit. And that's one of the secrets of their divorce. I don't know if her shit was the cheating, or if there's something else going on that I don't know about. I have to stop thinking about this, because it will not help with my block. 

Instead I could think about the bareness of my room. All the old art I had on my walls is still in a box on the floor somewhere in the house. I haven't unpacked a lot of my stuff yet. I don't want to, mostly out of pure teenage laziness, but also because there are things in those boxes I'd rather not look at again. 

My mom isn't the only one who left secrets behind.