776

776

A Story by smear
"

But my need, like time too, shall pass.

"

It is days like these when I wonder about you, what you will do with me when you are finished. Like a painter, you will work until you make something beautiful. Apples, grapes, dragonsfruit, melons. Maybe it is the colors, or the way they shine. Time as you spend trying to capture their image, maybe even an essence of the life they hold, there is little more you will do. Little you could do.

Taste me, touch me, smell the sweet scent I leave in the air even after I am gone. In time your mouth will water, as you sit and paint. I wonder how long until I will rot. It feels like forever may pass until the end of our meeting. It could have been a day, a year, maybe even longer as I wait for you to get up. I will wait for you to come to me.

But my need, like time too, shall pass.

Seconds, days, even years may pass. I’ve yet to feel the digging of your ivories into my skin, breaking flesh. Sweet, I wonder, if I would be sweet. Part of me is certain I would be able to keep you gnashing into me. And another version of myself wonders, truly wonders, if I’ve started to bruise. My hide is still lurid, bright with dulcet colors. My melody still plays nicely, though the longer my song continues, the more dissonance you will find. Lovely, at first, but before too long it will take over my tune. Until one day, I am but old and def, bashing at the keys of my piano. Where I was once gentle, I will sting. My softness will make you itch, and the cool soothe of my body bun you.

But then I remember, when I am rotten and decaying. I remember that i still hold the same shine I once held in my youth. Time has never passed! Oh, god, for so long I’ve was so foolish. I’ve waited an eternity in but a few minutes. Yet still, even after deciding to move from my respite, I cannot. I am still needed. For you, for your work. Dare I to move, everything you have done will be for nothing. Right down to to the newest brush stroke.

The fibers of your tool is steeped in red, then jade, sometimes even yellow. You are careful as you rinse it off, I notice, each time before an new color is filling it.

He is delicate, smooth as you make each new mark. The paint leaves ridges, each edge glistening along as the brush gives them more length. He too, grows tired. There are times my mind wanders, as I watch, if his bristles fall from their confines, getting lost within the paint. If he will lost them all, and when you will be through with him. Which strand, is one strand too much? At what point do you throw him away, and buy a new brush? My eyes almost glaze over as I sit, pondering these things. I wonder when you will throw me away.

And yet you show no signs. I feel old, withered. Yet I shine. The red of my skin glimmers in the lights overhead, and I glow under them. For a moment I feel new, for a only moment. Because for the first time in years, maybe, I have recall I am not a simple apple, nor a grape hanging from a vine.

I am wax. All of me, right to my core. Nothing in my is hollow, and i do not wait to be eaten. For I am made to look at. To paint. I am happy shortly, only before realizing that I will never be sweet. My juice will never spill for the corners of your smiling maw, and my stem will always remain in tact.

I carry no seeds. Fashioned by your hand, I am made to be, but not to make. For a while I am curious. Had I a mouth, I’d ask, how come you never planted me? How come you never gave me the chance to /grow/?

Yet I wait. Cultivating dust as I rest among the others.

They are like me.

I never knew this before today, and it is a shame. For I have felt so alone. So alone, and for so long. The others have been by me this whole time! But I was too foolish, enthralled by you, to realize I was not truly alone for so long.

It is Because they are like me that I weep.

They lay idly, wondering, dormant in their thoughts as I have been.

© 2016 smear


Author's Note

smear
8/25/14

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Added on July 7, 2016
Last Updated on July 8, 2016
Tags: painting, painter, food, allegory, metaphor, seed, growth

Author

smear
smear

vestal, NY



About
hi! my name is smear. im 22, agender, and love to draw and write. also make music. i go by they/them pronouns. more..

Writing