Artistry

Lara Vasquez: an artist. Mason Ray: a renowned psychologist. Lark: a psychology student. What do they have in common? The answer will stun you. (*cover art by Incé Husain)




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i.

Psychosis is an acquired taste.

I was made of fabric then, that’s why you seam-ripped me with (admirable) ease. Three months of playing dead, and I found ecstasy in the ravines you carved into my skin. You unwittingly handed me my long-lost salvation. You cut me into a genius. I line the floorboards with the flesh you ripped from me; they reincarnate themselves in a fire, in the blood beneath my lids, and I brew a psychosis the world has never known. I am too overwhelming for sanity.

Gods are not sane.

But they can be weak.

Take this painting, for example. The girl is elegant and peaceful; her eyes are elongated. The furniture around her glints, stares in awe at her radiance.

The girl looks exactly like me, with one (subtle) difference.

The secret of her beauty lies in her sanity, not her madness. The secret is heavy enough that we don’t look the same at all.

I can construct sanity. I can press my fingers against it till they ache. But I cannot taste it. I am trying to rationalize myself out of envying my creation. But if I must rationalize myself out of it, then the envy is natural, and it is so extreme that if I dangle it in front of myself tauntingly enough it will become psychosis.

I am a weak god, to have created something I envy.

Weakness cannot be destroyed. It can only be transformed, or deflected.

I wonder which one I chose, to transform or to deflect: the sane girl lies in scraps at my feet.

But she is still staring at me, as if I owe her a debt.

I wonder what Eliza would think.