Identities, Nonentities

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The tea is cold at your wake.

An hour ago, you were swilling it past its edges and yours. It seeped into your skin and you imagined it soaking right into your pores, right down to the bone, so that your insides and outsides finally matched.

Your maker is to your right; brows burrowed, bottom lip furled, spine curled to his easel in concentration. His thoughts spill to his canvas, in what was once an endearing quality to your naivety. It is unnerving now, the sight of one so absorbed in paint and paper.

His fingers are smudged from the stump of charcoal that barely lasted the first hour. His other mediums are scattered across the floor in abandonment. He paints in black and black alone, in sweeping, disconnected motions, the monosyllabic words of an inspiration-starved poet.

He is supposed to be drawing you, his self-proclaimed muse, but it bares no resemblance. It is cold, like your tea. It lacks your color, your warmth. This charcoal replication is unworthy of your eyes, your heart of gold.

You would love more than anything to tear away the noose of ruffled satin draped around your neck, like tinsel on a Christmas tree. To tell him his creation is more a reflection of his narcissism and less of poetic honesty. That it will never love him back. That it will hang on walls, or perhaps be stored away in someone’s attic, and he will be forgotten by association.

But he told you to stay still – restlessness was ugly in his mind – so you played the part of a statue; cold and imperfect, traded in your heart of gold for marble. You sigh in discontent, but he does not notice. He is still painting, and the tea is still cold.

He is silent, a dreamer, an artist, but above all, silent.

You wither and die, the rose in the closet.

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Quick note: This is a short preparatory piece; I'm trying to become acquainted with the familiarity of accepting critique instead of being embarrassed about everything I write.

Thanks for reading :)