Just Kids

“Patti—wanted to cry so bad,” he wrote, “but my tears are inside. A blindfold keeps them there. I can’t see today. Patti—I don’t know anything.”

“I stand naked when I draw. God holds my hand and we sing together.”

Something in the change of the weather marked a change in myself as well.

I craved honesty, yet found dishonesty in myself. Why commit to art? For self-realization, or for itself? It seemed indulgent to add to the glut unless one offered illumination.

We were both praying for Robert’s soul, he to sell it and I to save it.

He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination.

In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.

We took a deep breath, accepting our complicity, not in theft, but in the destruction of a work of art.

I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know.

“One day we’ll go in together, and the work will be ours.”