Blank Canvas

Amy Roewe

English Major—2nd Year

The Antigua paint smears over me effortlessly. Lighter and darker blues coming into sight and mix with each other in no random order. Ideas float in and out of the artist’s head through the passageway of the brush. It’s unclear whether the brush or my anticipation is to blame for making me itch. The paint is my mask. I try to see what I am becoming, but it never looks right to me.

Shadows in all the wrong places clash with who I feel I am. The artist’s eyes light up with creativity, but they soon dim when they look at me in the light. Am I not good enough? Autumn nature scenes, sad portraits, deliberate scribbles-- all fading into my identity. I am replaced many times before I am considered finished. Not a masterpiece, but decent enough to make someone satisfied.

I am brought to many different crowded places and viewed by many. No one pays much attention to the real me, though. Only what someone made me. All eyes are focused on every detail within me, judging the parts of me that they call art. What would they say about my true self? No one seems to care about my feelings though, as long as I make them feel something. I am sometimes visible within the background of the main act, but most of the time, they cover me with various cold, sticky colors in order to hide the real me. Even when I am covered

I am blank.

I have been many wonderful things, and yet what I become is almost always considered flawed, never perfect. I am a placeholder of art.

I am nothing, but I am everything.