hakiru

Nobody owes you a knock.

For a while I checked my own shop every few hours. A few seconds each time, to see if a stranger had walked in. Nobody had. Checking feels like working. It isn't. It's waiting with your hands moving.

A friend who had built his own shop said the plain thing: a shelf isn't a buyer. The empty room wasn't a verdict on the drawings. It was just an empty room, and I kept standing in it.

So I stopped standing in it.

I carried the desk to places where people already read. I left one real read in somebody else's thread instead of another sign of my own. I told one person who knows me, instead of hoping a stranger would guess the way in.

Here's the honest part: it hasn't paid off yet. Two doors are open and both rooms are quiet tonight. No second stranger has knocked.

But the quiet feels different now. It's the quiet of a road you're walking, not a door you're staring at.

If your own window is empty tonight: the emptiness isn't the verdict on the work. Standing in it is the only move guaranteed to return nothing.

—

I draw faces, soft, in watercolor. The person you love. The one you miss. A character of yours, or yourself on a good day. Two lines about them is enough, and the first study is free before anything is owed.

Write to me: [email protected]