The day my inspiration arrives, she didn’t come with kindness. She didn’t come with grace. She came like a fist in the dark, breaking the silence I had been hiding behind. I was sitting in my usual spot, surrounded by my tools , the murmur of conversations, the distant scream of a siren. I thought I was safe there, in the noise, in the blur. But she found me anyway.

I didn’t recognize her at first. She wasn’t some radiant vision or light breaking through the clouds. She looked tired, worn down. Like she had been through the same streets, the same days, the same years, but felt them differently than I had. Felt them sharper. She sat across from me, didn’t say a word, but I felt her gaze on me like a weight. I tried to ignore her. Pretended she wasn’t there. I had gotten good at that ignoring things, pretending they didn’t matter, that they weren’t pressing in on me, that I could keep walking through life without looking too closely at anything.

But she wasn’t going to let me go. Not this time.

“You think you’re doing something with your art?” she finally asked, her voice cutting through the air like glass.

I blinked, unsure if she was real or just another thought creeping into the back of my mind. But she kept staring, waiting for me to answer.

I started, but she didn’t let me finish.

“No. You’re not. You’re hiding. You’re playing safe. You think putting a few lines on a canvas is going to change anything? You think you’re saying something?” She laughed, but there was no warmth in it. It was cold, bitter. “You’re doing nothing. You’re lying to yourself.”

Her words hit like a punch to the gut. I wanted to argue, wanted to defend myself, but I couldn’t. Because I knew, deep down, she was right. I had been painting things that didn’t matter, writing things that skirted the truth. I had been walking around with my head down, hoping no one would notice I wasn’t really saying anything at all.

She leaned forward, her eyes locking onto mine. “You’re afraid. Afraid of what happens if you say the truth. Afraid of the mess, of the anger, of the damage. But that’s where the truth lives, in the chaos. You want to create something real? Stop pretending it’s pretty. It’s not. It’s ugly. It hurts. And it’s going to destroy you before you can even touch it.”

I felt my chest tighten, the air growing thick around me. I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to feel this. But I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t pretend she wasn’t there anymore.

“What if it breaks me?” I finally asked, with shake voice

She smiled, but it wasn’t a smile of comfort. It was something darker. “It will. But that’s the point.”

I sat there, the weight of her words pressing down on me, knowing that once she said it, there was no turning back. I’d have to face it, all of it, the fear, the truth, the ugliness I’d been avoiding. And I knew, in that moment, that my art would never be the same again.

As I opened my mouth to respond, to accept this new reality, she was gone. Just like that. No dramatic exit, no fading into the background. Just gone, like she had never been there.

And for a second, I thought maybe she hadn’t been. Maybe it was all in my head. Maybe I could go back to pretending, to painting what I knew would be accepted, to writing what wouldn’t cause pain

But when I looked down at my hands, they were stained with paint. The colors I had been too afraid to use.
© Luis Mujica