Yellow: The Golden Bath

I dipped my toes in with hesitation, but the glowing ripples pulled my feet in with gentle reassurance. I exhaled with relief, allowing the doubt to dissipate through my skin. For so long a deep fear would rise in my stomach every time I saw my reflection mirror back at me in the golden bath, so much fear that I chose the familiar comfort of a cold plunge into my pain. Eventually, I had become numb to the vitality of the light. Numb to the touch of my own skin, like my nerves became tangled so tightly from the turbulence of life that all sense of feeling was blocked. I've lived 10,433 days in this body and I'm afraid to admit that I don't remember most of them, some are gently covered with a dark blanket that I refuse to lift, and there are few where I can recount the feeling of the sunlight glowing through my stomach.

XV Light No. II​, October 2025, Acrylic, 24" x 30"​

I have yet to fully submerge myself into the golden bath beneath my ribs, my abdomen turns in knots at the thought of a warm embrace. It's curious how accustomed I've become to blinding nature of sorrow, yet each day I reach for the sun, dreaming of the desire to be filled with light once again. I've come to learn that to endure the darkness is the avenue into cultivating a garden of flowers within, the petals of my soul would burn if the sun shown all day. So, I write letters to the moon, asking questions of the obsidian blanket that she wraps herself in each night. I tell her that some nights I am afraid of the dark, so she opens her arms and sings me lullabies of the cosmos. She tells me stories of seeing the most vibrant colors emerge from the void between the stars, how the ribbons of color wouldn't shine as brightly if it weren't for the black space standing so boldly behind them.

I release my grasp, I allow the shadow and the light to dance through me like the sun and moon waltzing through the sky. My soul becomes the room for the two to endlessly trade places. I dive into the golden bath, allowing the warmth to melt my substance, revealing the impurities beneath my bones. I ask the moon to weave my threads of darkness into a tapestry behind the stars. My soul dances in the moonlight, no longer afraid of the setting sun.

Painting: Light No. II from La Période Lumière