ARTIFICE

At least that's the life James Parker wished he lived.

A slight hum of whispers throughout the National Art Gallery was what facilitated his Saudade, a succession of pointless thoughts drenched in regret and shame. But James didn't mind. After all the wrongs he's committed, the guilt that gnawed him, it all felt like justice.

Currently standing before his most recent work, James Parker diligently watched the hues and tints of colour, and more so, the stories they told. In this piece, James Parker took in his daughter when Ming didn't want her, singlehandedly raised her and nurtured her talent for art. He watched her get married and died peacefully next to her. In his last piece, James was forced to take in his daughter when Ming turned to drugs at age 25. The piece before that, his daughter tragically died of cancer at 13.

Because truth is, 17-year old James Parker could not throw away his life for a child he was unprepared for. So decades ago when Ming really came over, their daughter in her arms and tears in her eyes, they both made the decision to give her up for adoption. And neither of them looked back.

Ming followed her violin all the way to Perth and James followed his paintbrush to a good college in New York, neither of them speaking to each other again, and their baby, a mystery.

So now, reeling from his past sins, James Parker paints every professional piece in dedication to his lost daughter and in each one he tries to picture a world where he made a different choice. Where he got the chance to meet her, or raise her, or name her.

Time, after all, is but a misconception on a canvas. And he can paint a new choice, a new world every day until he dies. And he will. James Parker has and always will spit back his devastation onto a black page and create beauty from pain.

After all, it was that situation that birthed the colourful masterpiece before him. The canvas and everything on it was embedded with the soul of a daughter he never knew. The uncertainty allowed James to hold the paintbrush with his heart and not his hand, speak to the page in a new language and create a mirror with the stagnant reflection of opportunity.

James Parker will never get over his daughter and he would like to believe that she will never get over him either, but just like her father, maybe she can use the absence in her heart to design something greater than the both of them. Into something beautiful.

Author's Note

😭😭😭 I will never get over this tbh. If you guys enjoyed don't forget to vote! For My Beloved is officially over and I want to thank YOU for reading and supporting it. It's truly been an amazing time writing these stories. Thank you, readers.