When I count down from five, every memory, thought, and feeling of you will be erased.

I will no longer remember you.

You will be nothing to me.

Every waking moment we've had will not exist.

And I will feel something other than love.

Five.

5:55pm. The time when I confessed to you. When I told you face to face on how I feel and you said you couldn't reciprocate it.

I remember the way the sunlight hit your face—golden, soft, and almost unforgiving. I remember how my hands kept shaking, how I nervously laughed before I spoke, like it was a joke I couldn't take back.

No. You didn't reject me. You just needed time... that's all.

Because, you don't sneak out at midnight with someone you didn't care about. You don't just give someone that look with those damned eyes while they painted you. When we painted on each other’s face and joked and laughed. When everyone thought we'd look good together.

And the times you were close to me that I have forgotten to breathe.

So no. You did not reject me. You just haven't realized it yet.

Four.

I have spent four months painting you. Layer by layer, oil over oil, until I couldn't feel my hands anymore.

I painted your eyes the most. Over and over, trying to get it right. Finding the right version that looked at me the way I remember

When I showed it to you, you just smiled. Only a smile. Said it was beautiful. Like it was just a painting. Like it wasn't a painting of you.

That's when something shattered inside me. I think that's when I started to hate you. Or maybe—hated to think that I ever had you.

Three.

If I stopped painting you, will you come back?

If I ruin this canvas, will you finally notice me?

If I confess once more—properly, calmly, and better this time, would you have loved me back then?

Please tell me what I did wrong. Tell me what I should fix about myself. A painting is a painting, I can always redo it all over again.

I can repaint it. I can repaint you. I can repaint myself.

Just please—don't leave me here hanging.

Two.

One hundred paintings of you in my room. Different angles, different emotions, different feelings that I thought I saw in your face. Yet, none of them felt like loving me back.

Now, the room reeks of turpentine and something rotting. I stopped opening the window. Ignored my unread messages and missed calls. Stopped painting anything that wasn't you. Because, if it was something else, what was the point of it all?

Maybe you were right. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe I made you into something that I assumed was worth loving because I wanted to be loved.

One.

You were never mine. Not even for a bit. I borrowed meaning from the way you existed near me. That's all it was. Proximity. Light hitting a surface.

An illusion I painted over and over until it felt real.

I looked over at the canvas. It's still you. But, it's also just paint. It's just lines, color, and shape. It was my choices and obsession.

It was not you. Never about you.

I didn't make a hundred paintings of you because I loved you. I made them because I could not learn how to stop. It was easier to recreate you than to understand why I needed you at all.

I pick up the brush. For the first time, I didn't paint your eyes. And I painted over them.

The Frontman