I hold the pigments in my fist, I look closely and I follow the rhythms that show me the way. I sweep my arms, I swing in circles. What I want isn’t just a painting. I want to feel the swell in my heart as I see the streetlight. It peeks out from behind a tree as I turn a corner as I walk towards home.

I want to scream. I want to cut this silence with a knife. I want you to feel me, I want them to see me. I want to hurt. I’m afraid of pain but I want to hurt so bad I pass out. I want to wear my heart on my sleeve and I want blood to drip down my hand and cake under my fingernails and I want to heal the wound inside me. I want to feed the children in us. I want to walk away, but I’m walking towards the voice of a lover as it turns into a scream. I want to walk away, but I’m following the lights until they lead me to the edge of the water. I want to swim, I want to drown, I want to walk until the soles of my shoes are rubbed through and I have blisters on my feet. I want to walk away, but I can’t, but I won’t.

I believe in rhythm and beauty and soul. I believe in music, I believe in walking. It calms me, it heals me. I see a thousand things and a million people. I smell car fumes and I feel the rumble of the subway underfoot. I am connected. I believe in connection. Sometimes I believe in god, just long enough to hate him, to be filled with rage. I want to kill god. I want to kill myself. No, I want to kill this monster that rages inside of me, that feeds on me. Inextricably linked to me. I went for a walk in a graveyard and I believed in the eternal soul, or the energy of all of us. Of billions and billions. And I walk among them, the souls and the people. And I have hope.

This will be my precious something, it will be the music. It will be the light bloom that haloes the street lamp and the lines of yellow light that extend from my eyes and through to my fingers and toes that tremble in the cold, sweat in the heat and still I walk and it will be me. I will be the life that I walk towards. This art will save my life. I will be the light, somewhere at the end of the tunnel or through the trees. And it’s mine this life, and it’s a light somewhere through the trees and it’s the stone that I kick down the path and it’s the path through the trees. And I see the light and I hear the leaves rustle and it’s all god talking to me and I listen like music.