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He wants to know how it is not to do the thing you love,
to live without colours, to deliberately choose
blindness, to renounce the art of seeing.
And then to begin again, learn the names of colours,
the alphabets of joy and grief, the grip of brushes,
to say sky, grass, table, jug, water, like one
regaining her sight, seeing things as they are
as the darkness peels away, it is her touch he wants,
the way he holds the necessities of life to light.
He wants to know the stillness before the still-lifes,
the way objects hold her. He wants to hear
the voice of light commanding her to rise from the dead.- Boey Kim Cheng, Painting Into Life
