I have black stains on my hand, and I don’t know if I want to wash them away.
Ink has been a close friend of mine for as long as I can remember. I’m not pompous enough to be the type who writes with a calligraphy pen, mind you, but I do hoard an unhealthy amount of various types of liquid black in my cupboards, which I sometimes bring out to play with.
No no, what I do with them is nowhere near aesthetic and skillful. I’m definitely no artist. But still, I have my inks and my canvases, and from time to time I bring them out to play, just to see how black can taint a pristine white canvas.
I think this tendency of mine is a manifestation of the neatly organised vision I made my life out to be where nothing is out of line, and everything is coordinated. The clean state I try to keep my life and mind both, seemed to have taken a toll on my emotions in some sort of twisted way, so I let out my frustration with blacks on white, let myself lose control and see the mess I could make out of something so pure.
From time to time, charcoal also comes to play in my organised method of destruction, and from there the stains of black on my hand begin to look more like smudges of ash from a fire hazard. Sometimes, I can even smell the burning of wood behind my nostrils, and then I see myself standing in a forest somewhere, where trees burn bright red as I watch on, uninterrupted.
It is no healthy habit, I know. This method of mixing pleasure with the past, desperation with destruction that does me more harm than help, yet I still go back to it, yearning for a form of release. Because if I don’t, it doesn’t take long for the dust-free surfaces of my apartment to start mocking me.
I guess I am a person who has a well-organised chaos brewing within them. It pulses with every pump of my blood, and slashes its claws to be let out. If I do not keep it unchecked, I fear the fire I see in a forest might turn into a fire in my room soon enough, and instead of wood I'd smell raw skin and flesh burn through my nostrils, which again, is not a healthy mindset to have, but I have never been completely healthy, have I?
Hence, I now sit with ink stains and chunks of charcoal smudges lining my hands. They certainly are better than lines of dry blood. The canvas I raged chaos upon is already dumped into the trashcan, away from my face, and the smell of fire has already ceased.
But still, I continue to sit, looking down at my hand where bits of charcoal are now stuck under my nails. They look like dirt now and remind me of digging a grave.
Maybe it was my own that I dug.
Or maybe, it was of someone who I ruined long, long ago, just like the canvas I buried under the trash.
Image generated using DALL.E AI
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