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Kyle Kresge

MASTERPIECE

The movement of my hands feel like a song, sung by
someone who does not understand the language the song
is written in. All the words are there, the melody in tune,
the rhythm just right, but the empathy in the voice is
gone. The way the lyrics sound when you can tell the
person who is singing them truly cares about what they're
saying. My hands move like a clumsy high school choir,
butchering an Italian song whose meaning they had not
bothered to learn. Only noise, no art.

I let out a sigh as my hands dropped to my side,
wiping the opaque, sticky liquid on my work pants. Even
when a work of art is a failure, you still have to clean up
after it. I put away my tools and drop the miserable
mistake on to the floor, on top of a cotton cloth I keep for
disposing materials. It falls to the floor with a delicate
thud, kicking up dust on the floor of my workshop.

I move both of my sore wrists in a semi-circle, looking
down at my hands, trying to calm my mind for a second,
to get the courage to try again. Both wrists audibly crack,
yet provide no relief to my aching joints.

Without you, there was no relief.

Without you, there would be no more masterpieces.

You always loved to watch me work. You would sit for
hours in my workshop, watching my sculpting, my
painting, my delicate incisions as I would turn something
ordinary into a work of art. You would always laugh and
call me a "found artist." You allowed my pretension, my

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