given first line (attempt one)
09/12/2022: a new assignment, we all wrote down a sentence we thought would be a fun sentence to start a story with and they were all idstributed back to us! so i had to write a story with that given first line. it was hard. this was the first one I wrote that I ended up scrapping because i realized i had to write a STORY around it and not just a loredump and went ahhhh it isnt going anywhere. it was based off of the song leia as i had been listening to it a lot at the time
Love. Who would’ve thought I’d go this far.
I’m constantly surrounded by the reminders of your passing.
Most keep an urn, traces of their past, or a heart-shaped locket. For you, we were artists.
I’ve been blessed with the ability to create. Angels, I had told you once, had always envied humanity for their power to create. The angels now seem to laugh at me tonight, however, as they peacefully adorn your grave, and I lay at home surrounded by the artistic waste crafting my downfall.
Your eyes, which had once been pools ripe for gazing, a mystifying swirl of a grayish blue, now haunted me with each and every stroke. The palette, these cheap tubes of paint, none could ever capture how bright they once shone. How could they? How could I ever be so arrogant to even try?
Your smile, once melting and divine, I could no longer even remember. Over and over, slathering layer of paint over layer, it always appeared wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong—this one was too lopsided, this one was too flat, this one looked too sinister—with every stroke I make my fuzzy memory of what once lay there upon your empty face recedes further and further into nothingness, until all I can remember of you is what lay depicted in the pile of canvases I now call my home.
My first piece was a humble offering of respect. I’m an artist. My spouse had just passed away. What more to commemorate their life (and to focus all my grief into)than with a painting? I’ll frame you with gold leaf and roses color-picked from those that line your resting place. What harm could it possibly have done?
But now seeing your face reflected on my canvas, ever so still and lifeless, it was wrong. It was all wrong. In life you moved recklessly, smiled with your whole heart and your pearly-imperfect teeth. My strive for excellence and my meager paintbrush could never begin to capture any of it—any of your motion, the life that swelled from your chest, the subtle imperfections and blemishes that truly marked your face as yours.
I scrapped it. I started over again. I never recovered.