All night, the brushes bristle
with unsteady prayers,
oil and terror in every sweep,
each canvas a battlefield
between memory and madness,
between longing and loss.
He paints in fever,
his trembling hand chasing ghosts
across gessoed plains,
trying to mend the world
with color and chaos
a smudge for each regret,
a highlight for every hope
he’s drowned in turpentine.
The house groans and blurs
behind him,
rooms melting into each other
like faces on the page,
shapes that won’t hold still,
voices splintering in the walls
they whisper, paint,
paint,
paint,
until there is nothing left
but cracked varnish
and the echo of “almost.”
He paints what he lost:
her laughter in morning light,
the gentle reach of hands
he can’t recall in detail
only the ache,
the hollow,
the unfinished lines
he keeps returning to.
Perfection dangles, just out of reach,
each stroke carving him hollow
as his world frays at the edges
canvas peeling back
to reveal the wound
he cannot heal.
He whispers to the silence,
to the shadows gathering thick as oil
Finish it for me.
His plea stains the air,
weightless as dust,
hoping someone
even in the next room,
or the next life
will take the brush
and find the shape
of what he could not complete.
In the end,
he paints and paints,
chasing the ghost of a masterpiece,
painting himself out of the world,
leaving behind
one trembling signature,
unfinished
waiting
for a gentler hand
to finish it for him.
