Blank Canvas

I’m not quite sure if this falls within a library’s shelf for fiction, or non-fiction. It’s hardly a book, anyhow. This slip into my mind you are about to take is slight, for the doorway from your world into my universe is narrow and nearly unseen (whoever you are, felon or innocent, it hardly matters to me. I write to no one, truly).

Life is a fiction I wish to escape. My mind should be the only thing that exists, but from the moment I was brought into this confusing world, it seems that God was hell-bent upon actually making me a part of something. My loquacious, meandering thoughts are for once silent, and how they spite me so! For this is the one time I do not need silence. My face, I am hoping, is a blank canvas.
Shouts don’t register in my head. Reality doesn’t occur to me. I am unaffected, yet

I am the catalyst to all the chaos that’s been raining on me and reigning over this address.

I was a fool to ever think that things were smooth sailing. Perhaps my naïve bliss is what had me making such mistakes – over and over and over again. Blame ignorance, blame troubled youth, and blame me. I have no scapegoat now.

This was fifteen minutes ago:

I jolt at the first sounds of their voices, and unsteadily tamped down terror unearthed from a past long buried. There is nothing left to fear, I tell myself. Yet those summoning words roared through my ears and fractured my usually fluid movements.

My body has never been so tense. Not since I last sparred in the dojo overlooking one of my favorite pizza restaurants. My hands are balled into shaking fists beneath the ridiculous length of one of my few sweatshirts. The muscles on my abdomen were clenched, making me think of dragon’s scales, of armor. I approach the room slowly, measuring every heavily silent step as if I were approaching a wild beast on alert.

In my head, their words come through, but not enough for me to truly care. They are wolves – one is black, the other brown. Their hackles are raised. They snarl. No outside viewer can determine the Alpha, though to my thoroughly biased opinion, the black one is. I take orders from him, though I don’t always listen.  I take after him (in appearance, and occasionally, attitude), though many say I resemble the smaller brown wolf. I detest the mere idea of appearing anything like her; those words, though meant as a compliment irritate me enough to make me feel like tearing my skin apart and turning it inside out.

Her snarls sound more like frightened keening, high-pitched with displaced authority and frustration. She turns viciously in my direction, and I do nothing. I am still, I am blank, I am nothing. Black is the absence of light – no light, no color, no identity. I am invisible. I am invisible.

This world has shattered, and I saw the cracks before anyone else. I wish I hadn’t lived long enough to cause this. I wish no one even entertained the idea of bringing me into existence, for if I am the reason behind all of this misery, then I should simply fade into the silence of the background.

I feel nothing. Why can’t my existence mirror my emotions (or lack thereof)? I didn’t want this. I wanted to be left alone to my misery or my bliss. I wanted no one to care.

Why can’t they just drive me out? What makes them keep me? I am worthless – I can’t give them anything. My contributions to this pack are nearly nonexistent. My voice is sweet on the wind, but I draw out melodies no one wants to hear but me. I live for myself, with a few exceptions. I am hardly worth the pain and turmoil I begin. No, I shall amend that: I am not worth the pain and turmoil I have unleashed upon this place.

Why then, does it not show on my face?

The one moment of fear in which I claim the blank canvas expression I so admire is the one time I wish I could explain myself. My face is more cursed than my lips – because even when I speak the truth I typically withhold or twist, my face lies.

Destroy this blank canvas.

Burn this painting and all evidence of it before the paints can depict another breaking landscape.

My legs are shaking, they are tense. The wood of the stairs beneath my feet is oddly warm for winter.

In the Now:

Reality is fiction, fiction isn’t what it’s supposed to be. For now, I let my dreams become temporary escape.