Paint My World Yellow // DNF

Paint My World Yellow

Go Solo - Tom Rosenthal

I should feel guilty. I should feel awful as i lay in my bed for weeks now. Staring at green wallpaper.

But this time things have changed a little. My mother isn't screaming at me. I can also tell the reason. And i can get tears out of my eyes. So many that i feel like i might be drowning.

And the time doesn't exist. At least for me. It might be weeks. Possibly years.

And it hurts to breathe.

And laying on my bed like that makes me hear the snow melting. And my heart breaking. And i can hear Drista in her room but she isn't laughing. And i am not painting.

And that's what artists do to you. They hurt you just like everyone else, just somehow they do it so peacefully and beautifully.

I'm the wine in the half empty glass.

Bitter and cold.

I can hear the glass cracking and i can hear the snow melting.

It's spring. And George wished for one thing. He gave me an hour of air, an hour of pain, but i guess time works differently for yellow artists. That's a lifetime of air. That's a lifetime of pain.

But he wished for one thing. And maybe that's why my feet shake as they meet the floor and my head spins as i stand up. And maybe that's why the world stops turning as i make my way to the familiar room. And maybe Niki bursts in tears as she hugs me and Tommy tries to stop the sniffles.

We're all just bunch of stupid little artists, sitting in a room, waiting to get our hands dirty with paint just to leave the classroom for one last time. And really, none of us want to do that.

But Kristin hands us our paintbrushes and turns on the quiet radio, it plays old songs and George isn't sitting next to me.

Or maybe he is, maybe he is floating somewhere in the room, humming along to familiar songs and marking stories in a new notebook.

Maybe he is sitting next to me, waiting for me to do something.

So i take out the colours and mix them together. I take a breath and let the world disappear. And i'm marking stories too.

Just not the ones i planned. Not Wilburs and not Fundys.

I'm marking a yellow artists short lifetime on my canvas and it's all yellow.

And time disappears, it feel my hands moving and i watch the paint dance around the canvas. And that's art. I watch it how i once got to watch George and how he once watched me.

And it's somewhat comforting to look at familiar eyes looking back at me, all yellow.

And George isn't a story to paint, he's an impossible art to make but he's also an unfinished symphony. He's a love story that makes people close the covers with tears in their eyes, thinking 'how could this happen? This is so unfair!' and it is.

He's a poem scraped in a poets throat, one that he can never put on the page.

But if there's one thing that makes me feel then it's yellow. And it's George.

So there i am, a stupid little artist at the back of the class, a bed bug, a damned man, a glass half empty. Painting a yellow artist.

All yellow.

As it should be, as we were meant to be.

I guess i'm not really mad anymore. Not at God, not at time. I'm an artist. And George was art. One that i got to touch, one that i got to live.

So i walk to his apartment and find the notebook under the pillows, i sit on the windowsill and watch the first spring sunset fade away and after looking at his room one last time i stroll through the kitchen and put the somewhat dry, yellow canvas on the kitchen table.

And i remember George dancing in the kitchen as he made me food and the painting of him doesn't look even close to that but i leave it.

I leave it on the table and walk outside of the apartment building to the parking lot. I watch as the first stars appear in the sky and when the yellow lamp posts turn on i stand up from the side walk and make my way home.

That nigh i don't slide back in my room.

That night i cry in my mom's chest.

That night i let my dad hug me and hold me for a while.

That night i walk in Dristas room and after holding her for a while as she cries too i take the small hammer in my hands.

And i fix the shelves.

And that month i stand in a quiet sea of tombstones as a new one is standing proudly between them.

I wish sickness would get sick and pass away like so many lives that it has taken. I wish sickness would feel the pain of taking someone away. And doing it so painfully.

That same day i sit in George's room and read through his notebook as the sun paints the walls yellow.

Only rocks and sun will last forever. And my love for you. That will last forever too.

So i take a black ink pen from his desk and open a new page.

What a waste we were. What a masterpiece we could have been.

And make my way to the cemetery. As i put the daffodils in the place where my first sunset sleeps i run my fingers over the words on his stone.

The yellow poet.

The End.