by Valeria N. Lopez Lemus, 14
To see your tears running down your face is the prettiest painting no one deserves to see. I wish to be the only one who has the honor of sculpting you like clay and ruining you like paper.
I’m wasting all your ink like a pen to see you bleed, and use your clean heart to erase all my mistakes. No matter how stained I leave you, I don’t know why you stay. Leave if you know I love you as much as a stranger.
But you can’t help but crawl back to me on one knee, as you seem to always forget about my thorns. Even after all the marks they’ve made, they’re my significant signature on your skin. I notice you don’t seem desperate for them to fade. For if you were, you would’ve never come back after I first discarded you.
I’ve learned that your heart is no canvas, but what was once covered in vibrant hues, I have now smeared and left an unadmirable mess. So much that the only way to admire it again is by throwing it away.
So don’t wait for me to heal those scars, for I’m no better than a blade. We can only hope someone will save you from my deadly hands.
But don’t worry, for you, I was only temporary. For me, I’ll keep you framed as my favorite art piece, despite it not being signed by its favorite artist. You’ll look back just to realize, I was absolutely no one to you at all, apart from a fever dream. Remember you’ll continue to reign my soul like a lucid dream.
The marks of white veil veins I’ve left on your heart would be the only time I would ever again pick up a paintbrush. To you I was a lesson, for me, you were life. A muse that one more artist has failed to keep steady. The only fresh paint I have regretted wasting and using on cut out pieces of paper and already stained hands.
All I can do is blame a ghost, for if I ever blame myself, I believe I’ll be too punctured to breathe again. Every touch I must receive now burns, a punishing ache that you have left reserved for me. The deepest pain you feel will always be clouded and chosen by me. There isn’t a life in which I would choose to leave you, nor a life where I even had other options apart from your crazed mind and the image of me.
And to paint again. I promised to you, to never filter you. I’ll draw you, carve you into my skull, so your tears strain me down, to make me realize the monster I am and was, to an art piece like you. So I know, if there’s no hope for someone like you, then what is there for someone like me?
Red Bank, New Jersey
Reader’s note: I chose Art Gallery to be a winner of the 12-14 prose category because of the surrealness and beauty of the author’s writing. The metaphor used in this piece to describe the narrator’s tendency to hurt the other character is beautifully crafted and was very touching to read.
Bridge Ink 