Image credit: altanaka

I gazed at the painting, then out to his form in the café. I looked back and forth and back and forth letting the truth emerge slowly, no matter how hubristic and impossible it seemed. What do they say – that when all other possibilities are proven false, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the answer?

I am an artist. I am a creator. It took time for me to accept what this meant and to what degree. I cannot stress too much how long it took for me to fully comprehend and assimilate this thought, how many hours that day I sat in frightened contemplation. But it is important to at least acknowledge this so that you do not think me too vain, too insane, in finally admitting the truth.

I had painted the future. And not a likely future that I might have intuitively, or even psychically foreseen – he would never have changed his garb without coercion from some force, some intelligence – it was not a future that occurred separate to my desires. It was the future I fashioned and painted. So I created it.

What I painted came to be. I could will a future through my canvas and it would come to life. The possibilities of this were both frightening and intoxicating. But would it happen again? Was it like a trick of the light, possible in one split second through some glitch in the universal fabric, not replicable, a moment of power that, in its passing away, became another totem of human impotence? Or was it more?

So you see, I had to try again. I had to know. Both to know my own power and its potential – the ego reaching for knowledge of itself – but also for whatever might be between my beloved and I.

Once I realized I might be able to paint a future between us, I had to go on. The thought, once conceived, could not be banished. I had to know the limits of my power and my love.

(c) Helen M Valentina 2015, All Rights Reserved