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DAPHNE
I bled out all that anger onto the canvas, but by the second morning it calcifies into something heavy.
Like bone, maybe.
Or water, sloshing at the bottom of a pool. Crushing the rock below. The weight of it crushes my chest and squeezes the air out of my lungs. My hands have a magnetic pull to the covers.
My first instinct is to pull the blankets over my head and stay here. Except I don’t like the idea of succumbing to soft covers and a beautiful view.
Emerson’s going to want me to eat—again. He’ll want me to go downstairs. I don’t even want to cross the bedroom to brush my teeth, but I do. Small victories. I don’t laugh at my own joke. Don’t crack a smile. I just stare blankly back at myself in the mirror.
Not good. I’m not like this. Not sullen and sad and listless. I force myself to get dressed, but the thought of walking all the way downstairs…
No.
I go into the studio instead. It’s a cruel joke. Offensively beautiful in the morning light. Even my irritation at this horribly lovely place is too distant to truly engage with. All my anger came to nothing. The canvas I painted is still there on the easel, but I don’t replace it with another one.
I don’t go near it at all.
I go to the drawers of supplies and take out a brush.
I won’t escape my anger here. It will always be in the house with me. The house, like Emerson, is constantly watching. Big windows let in the world, but they don’t let me out. All they do is show me the wide expanse of the ocean. I can see my freedom from the studio. I just can’t touch it.
It’s driving me into the earth, this feeling. Driving my feet through the floor. I don’t think I can shake it off, or paint it off. Running away seems out of the question. I take fistfuls of paint from the shelves, not bothering to search for my favorites. This won’t be any ocean I’ve painted before.
Garish reds fill my palms. Screaming yellows. A violet that makes my teeth ache.
A canvas is too small to lift what I feel off my chest and let me breathe again. It would crumple under the bleak, unwieldy despair hiding behind my ribs.
He’s never going to let me out.
I will be in Emerson’s house—in Emerson’s frame—forever.
Screw it, then. The windows can stare at nothing. I won’t let the ocean look back at me. I won’t look out at my favorite subject. I can’t believe he would think that this is what I wanted. To be separated from freedom by a pane of glass? A joke. It’s a joke. It makes my throat close and my heart ache and my soul sink into the ground.
Drowning. It’s like drowning.
I sidestep the canvas and go to the windows instead. The plan forming in my mind is wasteful. I would never do it, except it won’t make any difference here. Emerson can afford to buy me paints forever. Paints to layer over every square inch of this house. Paints until my heart stops. Paints until I’m dead.
A slash of red across the window. I wait for the guilt to come, the exhilaration of splashing money on glass this way. It doesn’t come. I add a cut of yellow. A disgusting green. That sweet, electric violet. A wave takes shape against my will. Even now, I can’t stop painting the ocean.
I can make it into something else. This collision of color looks how I feel on the inside, except it’s not the same. It’s a funhouse mirror. The way I feel is dark and cold and isolated, and this—
This is a vibrant, colorful box. I shut out the world stroke by stroke. There’s no real relief in it, just the dim satisfaction that comes from knowing Emerson will hate this.
It’s a waste of paint and skill, honestly. I could be creating something beautiful.
The windows in the studio are huge. I have to go back for more paint.
The windows are huge. I have to go back for more paint. I have to go back a second time, a third time. It’s not working and I didn’t expect it to. I didn’t expect for my emotions to clear, to become something understandable. There’s nothing to understand. I’m just a person trapped in a cage. A bird trapped in a cage. Is this what birds feel like? Do they hate windows for showing them the sky?
I don’t come to an answer on that one. The windows are ugly. I stop using any technique at all. Stop thinking about it. Paint and more paint, covering bigger and bigger sections of glass. Dragging the stool over serves as a break. The tubes of paint I have aren’t meant for a project for this size, but then—no canvas is big enough for how I feel right now. A canvas the size of the planet would be too small.
Every brush stroke is heavy. I’m layers deep now. Painting over sadness and grief and covering it again and again and again. It’s a disgusting waste of material.
I hate feeling like this. I never let myself feel like this. I never let myself stay down like this.
Fear prickles in the back of my mind. When I was growing up, I kept my emotions behind closed doors, where it was safe. It wasn’t for me to have tantrums where my parents could see. Not for me to have outbursts. That was for Leo. I knew better.
