Warming my hands

Approaching the store front, I press my small nose to the dirty glass and peer inside. The hungry walls stare back through the cluttered room. My hands are spread wide on the surface of the glass. Tension fills the air on both sides of the barrier. I close my eyes.

Warmth begins to fill my palms and fingers, the temperature slowly rising. My hands have been cold for too long. Raising my head, I jump back to witness the glass dripping. The drops grow bigger until the top of the glass rains down, imitating a perfect waterfall.

I step slowly through the opening and greet the walls with a smile. They just stare. I begin to notice how dark and cool the room is. There are cracks under the walls. Little bugs begin to wiggle their way out, inching towards my feet. I fear they will bite me. One of them crawls up my leg and nibbles on my hand. My hands felt good before I walked through the melted glass; now, they ache.

I attempt to shake off the bug resting on my thumb and massage my throbbing hand. I walk over to a familiar lamp I used many times before while warming my hands. Confident that it's light will scatter the creeping bugs, I turn it on and direct it's rays towards the cracks under the wall. While trusting the light will work, I watch as legs quickly find the darkest crevasses to bury under.

Keeping the room aglow with the lamp, I inch towards my paintbrush. The handle feels warm with the familiar light. So do my hands.


(2 weeks!!!)

Waiting

The sands continue in a downward drift. Only a small pinch of grains remain. Suspended in the hourglass, they await their fall, as do I.

No force can persuade the grains to fall, and so I wait. The time will come.

Patience is an important factor in this project, but I did not anticipate holding my brush in the air so long. My arm grows weary and I thirst for that initial stroke. That stroke will be the first time the empty, dreary wall will greet it's long-awaited partner, a brush dripping with direction, dreams, mistakes, and lessons-learned. That stroke will evolve into a path that dances along the once-unlit wall.

I have painted for myself a starting line. I can see the path. It remains in the handle of the brush I hold above my head. My shoes are laced. My brush is ready. But the race has not yet begun, frozen in time like the grains of sand in the hourglass. And so I wait.