Chapter 1

I don’t think painting is done only by hands.
I can’t describe it well to people.
Whenever my father asks me to come to dinner, to stop my work, put my brush down, and maybe take a break.
I can’t describe it well to people.
Because I can’t do what he asks me.
I can’t stop halfway through and then pick up the brush and look at the canvas as if there was no gap in time.
I can’t pause my thoughts, and hold onto them, going about my life- and then restore them to what it once was.
Once it is gone.
It’s gone.
I think painting is not done by the hands.
When I was young and my brother went outside to train- to work hard to make it as a pack warrior before his first shift- he would always encourage me.
Always tell me that within the Shaldon pack, if you didn’t train- if you didn’t become a warrior-

You didn’t become anything.
But I couldn’t describe it to him.
As he shook his head, already thinking and conjuring up my sad, sad fate in his mind. As he smoothed back my hair and said it was okay, when really it wasn’t.
As I watched him walk down the road, his friends soon clustering in with him, all of them eager and excited.
I stayed inside.
I don’t think painting is done with the hands.
Because I can’t tell my father, as he watches with his own sad eyes, how scared I am.
How scared I am to go back.
I can’t tell my father- my blissfully unaware father.
That I broke.
That someone broke me.
Against my will.
I can’t describe it well to people.
The only one who really seems to understand some of it is my brother. Hank.
His sad eyes hold some understanding.
He doesn’t push me.
Because he knows.
Because he found me in the woods that night.
Because he knows I can’t go back there.

Because I broke.
Because I’m broken.
I don’t think painting is done with the hands.
I think it is done.
With the soul.