Eclipse

I painted this for someone I thought was like the sun...close enough and yet exceedingly distant, warm, yet sometimes harsh enough to burn, and though jealously guarding his spaces, letting me in as far as his affection and need would disallow.

I painted in a smile; a reminder of mine that had once been reason enough for his. It reflected a happier time, before the beaming yellows evanesced into the greyness of an almost uncontrolled chaos...

This painting never found its place under the sun. It didn’t get to spread cheer like it was meant to, by infusing warmth and colour into a blank, stark wall, in a blank, stark room. No, it was dismissed to the bleak darkness of a cupboard, or a box, maybe, to lie there forgotten, along with a few, old dog-eared photographs of two happy-in-the-moment people, and other fading memories of me.

Maybe it’s just my imagination that I see a smile wilting, drooping, dying, in the suffusing blackness. Is it mine? Is it his?

Or is it the one in the picture...the painting that had once held meaning, which now simply holds two separate, distinct hues. A strong yellow, painted in thick, determined strokes, and a dull blue, delicate, unsure, receding...

That, and the ghost of a smile that once was.