I want to take care of a canvas that already knows another hand. I tell myself this is restoration, not destruction, that the careful stripping away of pigment is an act of love. I soften the surface with patience and solvents. The paint loosens like old scabs, like memories that no longer bleed but still ache when touched. I work slowly, afraid of tearing what holds everything together, afraid of finding nothing underneath at all.

Colors resist me. They bloom back as soon as I think I’ve lifted them. Ochres clinging like rust, blues sinking into the weave, reds insisting on being seen. I get lost inside them, the way one gets lost inside a story that promises meaning if you just read one more page. Each layer feels like a life I’ve lived or borrowed: the bright, impulsive strokes of wanting; the darker, heavier glazes of staying too long; the accidental smears that happened when my hands were shaking.

Sometimes I stop and step back, certain I’ve ruined it. The painting looks wounded, half-remembered, unsure of what it wants to be. But when I lean in again, I can almost see it—the pale grid beneath the chaos, the quiet geometry holding everything in place. The canvas is not blank. It has absorbed every color that has ever touched it. It remembers even when the paint pretends it doesn’t. This is where I always end up: wanting to go further, wanting to reach that raw surface where nothing is pretending to be more than it is. I want to know what remains when I remove the gestures, the performances, the beautiful lies I told myself so I wouldn’t feel alone. I want to touch the place where the painting first said yes to being painted.

But I never quite get there. There is always another layer, another hue that convinces me it is the last. I tell myself one more careful pass, one more moment of attention, and I will finally see clearly. Instead, I find myself surrounded by color again, stained by it, carrying it on my hands.

Always trying to reach the canvas beneath a person, beneath a memory. Always searching for the place where love was simplest, before it became complicated by absence. I keep stripping the days down, hoping to find them intact underneath. I don’t know how long I can continue this careful erasure, this devotion to what remains, but I keep searching because stopping would mean accepting there is no canvas left to touch.