Just by thinking about it,
I can fill the
world up with you

Yifan effortlessly the last of his finishing touches to the painting he is working on, making sure that the edges are flawless and that the color is balanced. He wipes his hands and admires the beauty of the painting – not really the painting itself but the subject of it.

It was her. It is her. And it will always be her.

“Where are you?” she asks through the phone because lately, that’s where they always talk through – the phone, email, anywhere but personal. Her voice isn’t demanding and it isn’t hostile because she loves him and love, that’s a difficult thing to cover but her voice sounds tired. Not giving up but tired.

He puts on his phone on loudspeaker because he can’t hold both his brush and his phone at the same time. “At my studio,” he answers curtly.

She waits.

“Why? Is there something wrong? Do you need help on something?”

She suppresses a sigh. She doesn’t want another fight or argument. She’s become too tired for that; she’s become too old for that now. But she wants her boyfriend and she needs him.

“No, Yifan,” she whispers, just audible enough for him to get the message and inaudible enough for him not to hear contained cries. “Can you come over? Or can I come there? I promise I won’t disturb you. I’ll just watch you work and I’ll keep quiet and I’ll…”

“We talked about this already, didn’t we?” he interrupts her.

She bits her lips.

“I need to work on this,” he says calmly but seriously. “I need to finish this alone. I can’t afford to lose any time. Every idea, I need them on the canvass because once they’re gone, they’ll never be back. You know that, don’t you?”

She knows that but what she doesn’t know is if she understands that. Nevertheless, she need not to be told twice because as much as she can’t understand what he is saying, she understands him – or at least, she still wants to understand him.

She bits her lips again and it bleeds but it doesn’t hurt as much as her heart does.

“Of course,” she whispers.

“I’ll call you, okay?”

“Okay.”

Yifan looks around his personal studio – at every canvass, at every sculpture, and at every sketch he ever finished and he sees her. It’s her face all around him and it’s her face still on his mind, waiting and wanting to be painted, to be drawn or to be sculpted.

Because she’s all he’ll ever be able to paint.

Because he knows that’s all he’ll ever be able to see her now – through his paintings…

Nine days before Christmas.