Aesthetic of the Unfinished

Oftentimes, the indecipherable aesthetic

of unfinished art baffles me.

With each brush stroke that adorns my canvas,

a melancholic numbness engulfs my being;

for everytime it finds a new form

It’s current mien dies with it.

I snap photographs, hang them on walls—an innuendo

of past lives of an artwork.

Taking one glimpse

of the “aesthetic of the unfinished”,

I adorn it with layers of new paint—

for you must convey a moral to the world.

A twist in my heart: a longing

to witness a finished artwork,

yet mourning over it’s passing miens.

What’s really an artwork but

a graveyard of it’s past forms?

Rtr. Michelle Perera