The Painting

The painting was ethereally beautiful – raw, magnetic, colourful, magical, real. It took your breath away when you looked at it and it charged every cell within you. It heightened your senses, made you feel happy to be alive. Sometimes it was too painful to face up to it because its intensity brought out the unspoken demons within. But that was what was so magnificent about it; the way in which after you glanced at it, you were never quite the same again. It was a life changing moment, lived over and over again.

But then someone took a knife to it. They cut through it, slashed it, and changed it beyond recognition. They turned it into something ugly, mismatched, scarred. They now claim it never looked the way it did. They say that it was false, fake, unreal.

They lie.

Luckily, there are photos that prove its realness and its magnificence, despite what they now say. And, more importantly, I have the memory of it – the beautiful, life-changing, dazzling memory of it. It has not been destroyed. It lives, damaged but still vivid, within me.