I'm looking at a blank canvas and it’s just… blank. It’s always been my favorite part, that moment before the brush touches, the promise of something new. Now it’s just a white wall staring back, accusing. For forty years, I’ve been an artist. That’s who I AM. Or who I was. Since I stopped going into the studio every day, since the gallery closed and I decided it was time to just… be, I don’t know what to do with myself. My hands feel useless, clumsy. Like they’ve forgotten their language. And the silence in the house is deafening. It used to be a comfort, a quiet hum that let the ideas bubble up. Now it just sits there, heavy and empty, waiting for a noise that isn't coming. My mother's in the facility now. It’s a good place, they say. Bright and clean, with a little garden. I visit, of course. Twice a week. And every time I leave, I feel this… weight. Not relief, not exactly. More like an unfinished painting. For so long, her needs, her care, it was a part of my daily routine, a constant hum under everything else. An excuse, maybe, for why I didn't push harder, why I didn't try for that bigger show, why I stayed close to home. Now that hum is gone. And I’m just left with the truth of it, all that time, all those years. And a blank canvas that feels less like a beginning and more like an END. I keep thinking about the little blue bird she used to talk about, the one that flew into her window when she was a girl. She’d tell that story every time she saw a bird, like it was a brand new memory. It was one of the last things she said to me before she really started to fade. "The bird," she whispered. "It was just… there." And I just nodded, patting her hand, even though I knew what she meant. That feeling of something showing up, unbidden, beautiful. That's what I’m waiting for. But it's not coming. And I'm afraid it never will. That I painted my last true thing years ago and just didn't notice.