He watched her. Everyday.
As she bled onto the canvas. As she mixed reds and yellows and greens to make beautiful exotic, colours, trying desperately to capture the emotions that raged in her heart.
He loved watching the raw emotions playing on her face. Desperation, frustration, satisfaction, love, and sometimes even rage.
It was only during these moments, that he glimpsed her in her purest form.
Unaware of the world around her. At that moment, her canvas was the only thing that mattered.
Occasionally she’d look up at him, her face smeared with paint, and flash him with one of her beautiful smiles, the one that made his knees go weak.
He loved her. That much he knew.
But she would never wholly love him. Not as much as she loved her art.
Her art was what made her truly, herself.
He had learned to accept that. That, as much as he yearned and craved for it, she would never love him more than her art.
She always showed him what she painted. And every single time, it’d leave him breathless. Her ability to capture things around her, and fit them onto the canvas. He marveled at how her tiny fingers could sketch such details.
But not this time. This was her masterpiece, she said. He wouldn’t see it until the very end.
Everyday he pined for her whole and undivided attention. Everyday, knowing all too well, that he’d be disappointed.
He tried to see the world as she did. In the exquisite blobs of colour that splashed her world. But try as he might, he couldn’t. He was never cut out from that same cloth.
She was something else altogether, and he wondered how he’d won a gem like her.
But today, was different, important. He saw emotions in her eyes he’d never seen before as she worked. Surely, this will be her greatest work, her greatest love. He thought. It was never me. It was always this, her art.
She finished, beads of sweat forming on her dainty, forehead.
And when he saw what she’d painted, he just stood there, dumbstruck. For there, was the most excruciatingly beautiful sight she had ever painted. Him.
She had painted him as she saw him. Dazzling glory, exotic colours and all.
And that was when he knew. That she did love him.
Without you, there is no art. She whispered. Without you, there are no colours. You ARE my art.
She had given him what completed her soul, what made her unique. She had made him immortal in that single, work of hers, so that even when all the world perished, he wouldn’t. And people would see his beauty, and the strength it took her to love him.
She gave to him, her very essence, her spirit, herself.
She gave to him, her art.
- Prerana
