One night, when I closed my eyes, I found myself in what seemed by be an art gallery. The walls were so tall, I couldn't see the ceiling.
None of the paintings were in color, and none of the paintings had titles.
As I wandered the exibit, some of the paintings vaguely looked like places I knew, others vaguely resembled animals, all of them making me uneasy.
There was a lone statue in the corner of the room. It had hooves like a horse, a long, flowing tail, scythes where its hands should have been, and no face — only many, many eyes.
At its base, it guarded a small bowl filled with crumbled up sheets of paper. Each sheet held a simple, colored drawing —
drawings once put on my mother's fridge, drawings once scribbled in a sketchbook on a rainy Saturday, drawings only meant for my art teacher's eyes; (cont. on next caption)
(— drawings that were so crude, so simple, and so filled with love.) I wasn't sure why, but as I looked at the drawings, I felt deep sorrow.
A sorrow so great, I couldn't hear the statue — no, the monster — behind me.
Only when it dried my tears did I see the marks it etched in the gallery floor; a drawing of me, for my eyes only. It was so crude, so simple, and so full of love. It made me so happy.
The last thing I saw before I left the gallery were the beast's many, many eyes, gleaming red against the colorless walls that confined it, and its gift.