Empty Canvas

The Empty Canvas

By Samantha Foote

Golden waves of the sunset fell across the blue ocean, the sand, once a pure white, had long since turned a virtuous gold. The dark grey clouds were gathering above, each one looked as if they had been painted by God’s hand, on a white canvas with supple watercolors. The clouds closest to the fading sun lighting up and making an imaginary doorway into heaven itself; each cloud after shining like a rainbow of various purple’s and pink’s. In the last rays of the dying sun a few fish and mammals could be seen taking a leap from the warm water into the cooling air. On the right stood a long dock, it extended 100 feet into the cerulean sea and stood as a large ship beacon. No large ships had docked there in years, several small fishing boats could be seen tied to the tall wooden posts, but the main feature was anything but a boat. On the very end of the dock as if it were a toll booth was a small shabby building. It had a large bay window facing the sun on both the east and west, easily watching and waiting for the coming and going of the sun each day. A man sat facing the dying flame, his hand hovered over paintbrushes, bottles and platforms stood waiting for the paintbrush. Each bottle eager to feel some of their contents drained, the slender pallets waiting to be touched with cool paint and smeared into a new rainbow of colors. The dry, blank, canvas ready for the heavy weight of paint; show off the colors of dark clouds threatening impending rain, the gold and red colors of each dying day. Before the man could set any of his own fire to the white, the image had faded completely. Now tiny stars were appearing on a now black sky. New colors were lifted to replace the light, each one darker and heavier. Few of these tiny friends bathed with white light shone, the clouds covered up the common stars. A new canvas, just as dry as the first, replaced the first one. Each canvas had its own responsibility, one to carry the sunrise, another to hold the day, even another for the sunset, and one to show the darkest night. Each a new stage of life, each one depicting the simple life of a normal man; the painter of course was anything but normal. Only when an abnormal picture came, only when he saw an image of his own life would he paint. Then would he show the world the rare beauty that came with stumbling through every step of life. His life was anything but what society considered normal, but for the rest of his life the canvas would never be painted. That was the most beautiful thing he could paint after all, the only thing that almost all could relate too. It was only fair that his best painting be blank, his painting be nothing but white. The world after all was an Empty Canvas.