We are like paintings, with all our layers. What starts out as a patch of sky gets eclipsed by tree. Green strokes through water, and blue is no longer just blue.
If I had a portrait of myself, a Dorian Grey of my own, I'd hope it forever remained wet. How does oil feel? If I had a portrait of myself before me now, I would run my fingers through the paint and wipe them clean against my skin . . . my face, my neck, my clavicles. Perhaps I would paint myself into a wall, a floor, a stained glass Mary smiling down at Jesus. I would become that glass. I would become the smile.
But--even though I so often want to hide, I know I cannot always. Not really. The need to do it isn't ever in me--completely.
I think my greatest wish, my real wish, is to blend the clashes--just within my own shape. Not all of them. Some lines can stay unfinished, can dry into nowhere, and some blobs of paint can crack upward, hard, jagged, sharp. But other parts--perhaps someday they can flow like rivers, blue and green and purple, and the black shadow of a tree--into the line of my neck, the damp skin of my eyelids.
Perhaps. Someday. Or maybe, after all is said and done, I'll just get to learn the meaning of oil--and rest.
