Muse

Muse - 2

(c) All Rights Reserved. This is a novel by sunbathh, pen name Caroline Leigh. Please tell me if any of my work is redistributed without my consent. Thank you, Caroline Leigh. Oh and Happy Thanksgiving! 

Chapter Two.

                When you lose someone you love, the ache never goes away. It stays with you forever, lingering in your heart. At times, the pain in stronger than others, sometimes it's just a dull thud. It's still there, though, scarring your heart with an eternal impression. Some people deal with it obsessively, keeping the belongings of their loved one with them at all times, keeping them in their mind at all times. Others are dismissive, acting as if the pain isn't there and they're perfectly fine.

                At first, I suppose I was the obsessive type, keeping old pictures of him folded up in my pockets. I was terrified that one day his face would disappear from my memory. That started the drawing. I drew his face every day, morphing his features as he aged. The crinkle beside his eyes deepened, his hair sprinkled with gray, and his eyes took on a different tone, a wise one that showed his growing age better than his features did.

                Eventually, I moved onto drawing my own pain instead of drawing him. I got to a point where I didn't know how he would have aged, wasn't sure what wrinkles would have started to appear. So I stuck to what I knew, what I felt every day.

                I drew symbols of my pain, a crying girl with tears streaming down her ace appeared on my canvas often. No matter what I drew, though, I always drew it in dark blues, purple, and black. The piece before me was no exception.

                Instead of a crying girl, however, there was a black bird. A sparrow maybe, or even a raven. It was perched on a tree, empty of any leaves while the surrounding trees were full of them. The bird was looking out at the sky, at the flock of similar birds, soaring through the sky together, one big happy family. There was a dull glint in its eyes as it longed to be soaring in the sky as well. It had a broken wing though, only halfway there due I an unknown accident. Scars stretched across the injured wing, snaking their way all the way up to the birds eye. It was evident that there had been an accident, but the accident was unknown to all the birds. Unknown even to me. Only the bird knew and so it shall be that the bird kept it that way. Looking from afar at the rest of its kind as they roamed the earth, finding the place they liked most.

                I knew in the pit of my stomach that the bird was me. This piece had been what I decided on as my project for my art class. No one else knew it was me, however, because just like in the painting the scarring was unbeknownst to my naïve fellow classmates.

                Ms. Peterson's eyes welled up with tears. "It's beautiful, Devyn," she whispered.

                Unlike my classmates, I had resolved that Ms. Peterson wasn't naïve. I suspected that she understood the pain my painting captivated. Sometimes, it almost felt like she knew exactly what had happened, but I knew that couldn't be true.

                My eyes locked with hers, each of us holding our gaze for a moment, having a conversation far too powerful for words. It was as if she was giving me her condolences but not in a sympathetic way where she pitied me. No, it was more as if she empathized with me, knew what I was going through. And that thought comforted me.

                I gave her a weak smile before replying, "Thank you."

                I wasn't just thanking her about my artwork, I was also thanking her for her company in my state of mind. Know that I wasn't alone felt good. Nobody had been able to give me that feel, not even Natalie though she tried so hard to.