Design Studio

 

The glass is half-empty, 

but the world is overfull. 

He sits where the mud meets the reeds,

the cheap burn of rotgut singing a low, 

jagged aria in his throat. The river 

before him is a stubborn thing, grey and utilitarian, 

until he closes his eyes and opens the doors to the studio.

his design studio.

The turpentine of the soul is a bitter pour,

stinging the gums, blurring the horizon

and the world becomes 

a wet-on-wet mistake

waiting for the master’s hand.

He leans back 

against the weeping willow,

the architect of a kingdom

built on a hiccup.

“The bird,” he mutters, a thick-tongued command,

“should be blue. Not the sky’s pale imitation,

but a violent, lapis bruise against the grey.”

And it is so. A streak of cobalt tears through the mist.

“The flowers? A coward’s gold.”

He leans into the canvas of the air,

crushing imaginary petals between thumb and forefinger

until the marigolds bleed a deeper yellow,

a yolk-heavy sun spilled across the bank.

He narrows his eyes, adjusting the aperture of his madness.

The sky must be sharper—a blade of slate—

while the light is throttled, dimmed to a holy amber,

the kind that caught the Dutchmen in their dreams.

He is a god in a stained coat,

arranging the atoms of the afternoon

until the masterpiece is pinned to the sky.

But as the final stroke dries in the mind’s eye,

the perspective warps.

The frame dissolves, and the pigment begins to pulse.

The river he laboured to tint and tame

breaks its banks and spills inward,

a cool, subsurface current carving

a canyon through his chest.

The outer world goes silent,

a discarded sketch left in the rain.

Inside, the water is crystalline and vast,

carrying the scent of wet stone and ancient stars.

And there, on the silken bank of his own spirit,

the old man sits again—

hushed, sobered by the sudden, terrifying clarity

of a landscape he did not paint.