Canvas of Life

I am holding a paintbrush,

trying to pour colour into a life
that has forgotten how to glow.

Standing before a canvas so wide
that I cannot see where it begins
or where it ends,
I realize I have been painting for years
without ever understanding
what picture I was trying to create.

One careful stroke at a time,
one trembling line across empty space,
another shade pressed into forgotten corners,
another quiet attempt
to convince myself that broken things
can still become beautiful.

I dip the brush again.

Blue dissolves into black.
Red bleeds into grey.
Colours collide without permission,
running into places they were never meant to go.

Some drip downward
like tears falling from tired eyes.
Some spread across the surface violently,
as if they are trying to escape the frame itself.
Others simply disappear,
swallowed by darker colours
before anyone notices they were there at all.

I keep painting anyway.

Because somewhere between desperation and hope,
I convinced myself
that if I just tried harder,
if I added one more colour,
one more line,
one more piece of myself,

Everything would finally make sense.

I thought maybe life worked like puzzles.
Maybe every missing piece
was waiting patiently somewhere,
and all I had to do
was keep searching.

But no one ever tells you
that some pieces disappear.

Some are lost forever.

Some arrive broken.

And some fit perfectly,
only to leave empty spaces behind
when they decide not to stay.

And then I stop.

I step back from the canvas.

I stare at it in silence,
trying to discover art hidden somewhere in the mess I created,
trying to find poetry between crooked lines
and purpose inside accidental stains.

But the lines are not parallel.

They do not meet.

They wander away from one another
like strangers pretending
they were never meant to belong together.

The shadows are too dark.
The light never reaches the places I wanted it to.
Nothing looks the way I imagined.

I search for meaning
the same way people search for stars
in polluted skies
hoping something beautiful still exists
behind all the noise.

Then I realize something.

Sometimes,

Some things are beautiful exactly the way they arrive.

A blank white canvas
untouched by doubt.

A brand-new car
before roads leave dust in its veins.

A heart yet to discover heartbreak.

A smile
that has not yet learned how to disguise pain.

Morning sunlight entering an empty room.

Fresh footprints in untouched snow.

A song before memories attach themselves to it.

Hands before they learn
what it feels like to let go.

Perhaps perfection only exists
before our hands begin interfering.

Maybe I am the problem.

Maybe in my endless need to repair everything
every fading light,
every sinking ship,
every wounded soul.

I forgot to notice
that I, too,
was slowly falling apart.

Maybe while trying to save everyone else from drowning,
I never realized
the water had already reached my lungs.

Maybe I became so busy
holding broken pieces of other people together
that I forgot my own hands were bleeding.

Funny how pain works.

You become so familiar with carrying it
that eventually
you stop noticing the weight.

You learn to walk with chains
until they begin to feel like skin.

Then suddenly,
everything breaks open.

Years of silence collapse all at once.

Words I swallowed.
Tears I buried.
Memories I locked away behind doors
I promised never to open again.

And the avalanche finally arrives.

Not with noise.

Not with violence.

But quietly.

The way winter arrives at night
and steals the warmth from everything by morning.

The way dust slowly settles on forgotten photographs.

The way oceans quietly erode mountains
without anyone noticing.

Some destructions do not scream.

Some arrive softly,
sit beside you,
and slowly teach your heart
how to become heavy.

Now I am no longer holding the brush.

Now I sit in the passenger seat,
watching someone else paint on my canvas.

And strangely,
I do not seem to care anymore.

Let them take the keys.
Let them steer

Because from the passenger side, it looks so easy. 

Their hands do not shake. 

Their strokes move with a clinical certainty,
as if they can hear a melody
I spent years searching for. 

They create constellations where I saw only emptiness,
they force harmony onto my chaos,
painting a life that looks beautiful to everyone else
while I sit quietly in the corner,
wondering how it is possible to feel like a ghost inside your own masterpiece. 

I watch how easily they choose colours. 

How naturally they fake the beauty.

How confidently they move through uncertainty.

And I wonder

Was I holding the brush wrong all along?

Or was I simply trying to paint sunlight during storms?

I glance down at my hands.

There is dried paint beneath my fingernails,
colours from battles
I do not even remember fighting anymore.

Tiny scars rest on my fingers,
silent reminders
of wars nobody knew I was in.

Proof that I kept trying.

Proof that I kept holding together things
that were already falling apart.

Proof that somewhere along the way
I mistook survival
for living.

Then I return to silence.

But silence is never empty.

Silence is crowded.

It carries every scream that was swallowed,
every goodbye left unfinished,
every feeling that arrived too heavy
to ever become words.

Silence remembers everything.

Even things we desperately try to forget.

Especially those things.

The quiet ones are often the people
who once felt too much,
until one day,
they felt nothing at all.
And I am no different.

I carry a heart that feels eighty years old
inside a body still pretending otherwise.

A tired heart.

One with exhausted walls
and old scars hidden beneath every beat.

Do not be deceived by this foolish smile.
some smiles are paintings too.
painted carefully across tired faces,
created to convince the world
that everything is still standing
even when entire cities inside us
have already collapsed.

My heart left the conversation a long time ago.
It returned only for attendance,
arriving every morning with mechanical loyalty,
beating because it had to,
not because it wanted to.
And yet somehow,
sadness remained behind.

Funny how sadness always knows where home is.

There are different layers to every person.
The layers we proudly display.
The layers we polish beneath bright lights
for others to admire.
The layers we speak about loudly.
And then there are the hidden ones.

The abandoned rooms.

The locked doors.

The pieces of ourselves
we pray no one ever discovers.

Mine feel like endless hallways now.

Rooms covered with dust.

Windows that have not seen sunlight in years.

Echoes of old laughter
still bouncing off walls
long after everyone has left.

And I am afraid mine have grown too thick.

Too heavy.

They wrap around my heart
like chains disguised as protection,
holding me down,
pulling me backward
every time I try to move forward.

Teaching me how to sink
while convincing me I am standing still.

Maybe I did not begin with the softest brush.

Maybe my colours were never the brightest.

Maybe my hands shook too much.

Maybe I was never meant to become a great painter.

But I tried.

God knows I tried.

I stood before this canvas of life
with hopeful eyes and trembling hands.

I painted with everything I had.
With love.
With fear.
With hope.
With heartbreak.
With dreams too heavy to carry.
With expectations I could never reach.

With pieces of myself
I can never take back.

And what I had at the end
was not beautiful in the way I imagined.

It was chaotic.

Wild.

Messy.

Full of unfinished corners and accidental storms.

But maybe we all carry similar canvases.

Each of us walking through life
holding different brushes,
different colours,
different scars hidden beneath our sleeves.

Maybe we spend too much time
trying to paint inside the lines,
never realizing that storms
were never meant to stay inside frames.

Maybe everyone is just pretending
to understand what they are doing.
Maybe everyone is staring at their own mess,
calling it failure,
while someone else looks at it
and calls it art.

Maybe mine was never the most beautiful.

Maybe people would look at it
and only see confusion.

But I would see every sleepless night,
every battle survived,
every silent war fought alone.

I would see every version of myself
that died quietly
so another version could keep moving forward.

I would see fingerprints in the corners,
evidence that I never stopped trying to hold things together.

Because it was mine.

Every stain.
Every crack.
Every ruined line.
Every colour I spilled while my hands were shaking.

Mine.

And maybe life was never about creating a masterpiece.

Maybe it was never about perfection.

Maybe it was never about painting something
people would stop and admire.

Maybe it was only about having the courage
to keep painting,

even when your hands tremble,

even when colours betray you,

even when storms ruin entire sections of your sky,

even when you are convinced
you have already destroyed everything.

Because perhaps one day,
many years from now,
I will stand before my canvas one final time,
look at all the chaos,
all the mistakes,
all the uneven lines and shattered colours,

And finally smile.

Not because it became beautiful.

But because despite everything,

I never put the brush down.