blackheart ➵ m. clifford

➵ six

➵ michael

To some, painting was nothing but simple strokes of colour across canvas, uninteresting marks that were not much more than tedious and frustrating. Tedious within the fact that humans were impatient, and didn’t stick around long enough to see the vibrancy left behind. Crap. Repetitive. Draining. A display of poop. They thought of it as consuming, a waste of time.

In my own reality, painting was more; it was brain-to-canvas projections from the blackest crevices of my ghoulish and miserable mind. It was like my brain was caked with layer upon layer of every colour you could ever imagine – yellows of primrose and lemon, reds of scarlet and ruby, and the deepest, darkest of cobalt blues. I thought of painting as simply trying to find some colour in this black and white world.

My head was my own little wonderland, a sanctuary; a hideaway behind the flimsy windows of my eyelids.

There was an underlying morbidity to every image that ran through my fingertips, each piece dominated by a questionable fragility that dipped in and out like the bristles of my brush into the acrylic in my pots. It was Jett. She was in my synapses, and she clouded the blood that streamed through my veins. I was infatuated with this girl, who was so lost in herself that I had no hope of finding her.

“Clifford.”

I shook myself out of my idiotic haze, my head swivelling to look at the blonde-haired mammoth-boy that was slumped irritatingly across the sofa at the end of my bed. He was watching my every move. His eyes followed every single lick of paint across the canvas, hmphing every time my lips curved up in the tiniest of smiles. He’d been telling me he was sick of watching me paint, but no matter how many times I told him he was free to leave, he didn’t make a single effort to.

“What?” I breathed, sitting back on my calves and dropping my brush down into the water that had turned red.

“You’re painting Jett again.” He averted his gaze down towards the canvas that laid flat against my wooden floor.

It was different this time. Before I started spending time with Jett, the paint on my canvas had been bright and starry-eyed, laced with my adoration for such a beautiful human being and hoping to God that one day she would actually be in my life. Now, each stroke held a sinister kind of fragility, and a darkness behind all the vibrancy that made your brain tick as your eyes wandered over the surface.

“I hadn’t noticed.” I scoffed, wiping my hands on my jeans.

These were my favourite jeans, not within the fact that they fit snugly – they did – or that they made my legs looks good – they did this, too – but because there was layer upon layer of paint; remnants of all my other pieces. It reminded me that I had been so inspired by something or someone that I couldn’t take two or three minutes to run down to the kitchen to get some paper roll to wipe my hands. I was immersed so deeply that I couldn’t bear to take my eyes away from it. And that was one of my favourite feelings.

“You’re so...” He started, trailing off for a second before he glanced from me to the painting and back again. “Heart eye emoji.”

My heart sank like the Titanic, and my throat felt like it was being crushed by an iron vice. It was like I could feel the embarrassment curling in my stomach, and the words that I tried to desperately to get out, just to defend myself, would dissolve in my chest. Luke was constantly poking fun at me. He would ramble about how Jett and he would swap mixtapes every other day, and how she would do anything for him. In some sick, sadistic way, I liked the way it hurt. I cared. 

“I like this one.” I murmured to myself, looking down at the barely-even-started canvas at the peaks of my knees. “This is my favourite.”

“Why don’t you show her?” Luke asked, swinging his legs over the side of the sofa and pushing himself up to his feet.