Art: Ritusri Halambi
It's past midnight, the time when my brain goes into overdrive.
People ask if it's a blessing or a curse
I say, it's both.
How weird it is that dead bodies are heavy, but they still float;
How awful it is that we can see life leaving a body and the light leaving their eyes.
I wonder why it happens.
I say,
We are artworks in process.
Life is the artist, a kid, who's been given a blank canvas by nature.
So when they say that life has been given to us, they're wrong;
we're given to life.
She draws a valley on the waist and fills the mind with pain-filled relief,
Calls it art.
A lurking regret of not deepening the valleys is there,
always there.
But that would be ending the work too soon, too hastily.
And so, the valleys are shallow, but numerous.
She draws them scattered like a zebra's stripes,
Calls it art.
The wrists are painted a beautiful brown.
But life? She's never satisfied.
So she scratches them out, paints them red.
Calls it art.
Crescent moons on the palms are her favourite.
They change colours, you see.
She draws them in black ink, they turn to blue, red, pink and then they fade.
She draws them again.
Calls it art.
Rusty red and salty tears embellish the painting.
Sometimes, life likes to paint everything yellow.
A glowing yellow.
But she hates that color, I think, for everything is found drenched in blue ink the very next day.
And finally when she's done drawing,
And coloring,
And scratching,
And spilling,
She sets it out into the air.
And leaves in search of a new canvas.
And so, in the windy arms of nature, the soul dries out.
The dying light, visible from the eyeslits.
You wondered why the body becomes heavy after a person's death but it still floats;
I say,
It floats because it's life's way of flaunting her art.
And, everything we experience in our lifetime, returns as butterflies.
And when they settle and admire, it weighs us down.
So we remain, the macabre art of life,
made with the tools of time.
Art: Ritusri Halambi