Ozymandias

I have killed Vincent Clarke six times. I have painted him over twice as much, each on a different-sized canvas, using a different brush, with a different color palette. Like art, Clarke is new every time I see him. Like art, Clarke never stays dead.

The first time I killed him was an accident. I can’t say for sure about the second time. By the third time, it was deliberate. It was just so easy. I slit his throat one time, and he laughed himself to death. He was never more beautiful than he was in that moment, with a grin as big and red as the gash across his neck. I dream of seeing him like that again—full of color.

The first thing you should know about Clarke is that he’s dead before he walks into the room. He has no presence. No color. If he never spoke, you would never even know he was there. He goes unnoticed, and he likes it that way. The second thing you should know is that he speaks endlessly. He can talk for hours and not say a single meaningful sentence. I guess that is what makes him such a good poet.

Down the road from campus, there rests an abandoned manor from the colonial period. It used to house a wealthy family, but everybody moved West, and it fell into such disrepair that no one ever repurchased it. If I didn’t have classes, I would never leave that place. As soon as Clarke discovered it, he decided to claim it for himself. That is how it became his grave.

The collection I had started after Clarke’s most recent death was one I was increasingly proud of. I painted him in several pieces, using one canvas for his eyes, one for his hands, one for his mind. I titled it The Conqueror. I planned to display it at the end-of-semester showcase tomorrow night.

When I visited the manor again to add the finishing touches, Clarke was already there, holding a pen and a cigarette in the same hand. The fingers on his free hand were stained black with ink. He sat cross-legged on the staircase, surrounded by crushed cigarette butts and countless sheets of poems.

“Oh, Everard! Perfect timing. I need you to read some of these and tell me if they’re the worst thing you have ever laid eyes on.”

I sighed heavily, deflating. “I don’t have time. Get out.”

He ignored me. “Start with this one. I think I’ll open my collection with it.” He handed me a paper. I tossed it over my shoulder. Clarke looked me up and down, as if searching for something, and I knew then that I was in for a dragging poetry discussion.

“What are you chasing?” he asked, holding back a curious smile.

“What do you mean?” I folded my arms. It irked me to no end how much a single glance in my direction could tell him.

“You know what I mean. What are you after? What are you here for? Why do you paint?”

I sat down next to him on the stairs, giving in. “Art is infinite. I can touch infinity with a paintbrush. Why would I do anything else?”

Vincent let out a gentle breath of laughter. “You’re chasing infinity?”

“Why did you ask me this?”

He sighed quietly. “Art is an instinct. Humanity craves art the way the forest craves the sun. But if it’s so important, why aren’t we all artists? If it’s truly primal, truly infinite, why aren’t you a poet?”

“This isn’t about poetry anymore, is it?” I asked. He gave me a thin smile.

“Nothing ever is.”

I tipped my head to the side. “Really? The poet says nothing is ever poetry?”

He shrugged. “If everything were naturally poetry, there would be nothing to write about. The poems would write themselves. We would all indulge in poetry the way we all breathe air. The beauty of poetry, of art, is creating something that wasn’t there before. I mean, what is art to you?”

“Everything. Everything is art.” I didn’t notice when I started leaning closer to him.

“Wrong. Nothing is art. You can paint the Mona Lisa, but it’s not going to be art. Not unless someone else says it is. Nothing is art until someone sees the art in it. The Mona Lisa is only art because people think it is. If nobody cared about it, it wouldn’t be art.”

“Isn’t there art in something nobody loves?”

“If a tree falls and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?” He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Come on, Everard. It’s not rocket science. You either see it, or you don’t. Simple as that.”

We fell into a comfortable silence. He never interrupted me when I was thinking.

“Am I art?” The question came out in a single breath. I know he knew exactly what I was asking. He wet his lips, determined to dodge the question.

“What do you think?”

“I want you to tell me.”

“Andreas,” he began, his voice uncharacteristically small, “you know what I think. Do you really have to ask me such a stupid question?” I thought about kissing him. He put out his cigarette on his poem, blotting out the title, and left.

I didn’t see him again until the showcase. Students, professors, and art curators wandered the hall, evaluating each student’s collection. A handful of curators ventured through my collection, occasionally writing on their notepads. Clarke followed them. They lingered in front of the signature piece, a full-body of a faceless man, painted only in shades of red. The curators murmured quietly amongst themselves, but Clarke replied loud enough for me to hear.

“Sure, but is it art?”

“What do you mean?” one of the curators asked, turning to him intently.

“It’s a wonderful painting, truly,” he said. “But I’m just not convinced it's art. I mean, does it mean anything? Is it anything more to you than just acrylic on a canvas? Art is more than just lines and colors, but I’m looking at this piece, and that’s all I see.”

The curators each nodded and scribbled in their notepads. My blood boiled. Fear pooled in my stomach. He turned them all against me with just one sentence. A real poet. I didn’t need to wait to find out if his comment had resulted in my failure. I already knew I wanted him dead.

Hours later, after the sun had set and the sky was a chalky blue, I stormed into the manor, already knowing he was there. I could sense him from two floors down. I threw open the door to the study to find him there, cutting holes in my canvases with a pair of fabric scissors.

“What is wrong with you?” I blurted, my face hot with anger. He set the scissors down on the desk, offering me a kind smile as if we were friends.

“Look. I think it might be art now.” He pointed to my collection. He had cut out certain pieces and carved words and sentences into others. Power in one. Legacy in another. I drew back my fist and painted a bruise, purple and blue, over his nose.

“This isn’t art, Vincent,” I spat. “It’s poetry. You don’t know the difference.”

He wiped the blood from his nose, a brilliant red, with the back of his hand. “I meant what I said at the showcase. Art is more than just lines and colors. But not to you. You’re not a poet because you use art as a means without an end!”

I tackled him, throwing him over the side of the desk. We wrestled more like little boys than like artists. The fabric scissors had fallen to the floor. I ducked down to grab them, just barely dodging his right hook. He stilled as soon as he saw them in my hand. We stood in silence, our chests heaving.

I tightened my grip on the scissors and stabbed them into his abdomen, inches below his ribs. I wondered if he let me. I wondered if he hoped I would close the distance with a kiss instead of a blade.

He groaned sharply, a sound I could paint if I ever dared to try. He pressed his left hand over the wound as blood seeped through his fingers, gripping the back of my neck with the other. It was these moments, the ones he knew for certain would be his last, that he was finally rendered speechless. He closed his eyes, suddenly needing to put in effort just to breathe.

“My name is Ozymandias,” he said, his voice soft yet unwavering, despite the pain he was surely in. “King of Kings.” I lowered him to the floor, leaning him back against the wooden desk. He threw out his bloodstained hands in a wide gesture, finally regaining his grin. “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

Blood stained his white button-up shirt a deep, royal red. He coughed harshly. His eyelids fluttered, barely able to stay open anymore. “What’s... what’s the next line again?”

I swallowed. “Nothing beside remains.”

He tried to smile, but it was more of a satisfied grimace. “Right. Nothing beside remains. That was always my favorite part.” He didn’t question why I knew the poem he recited. He didn’t know I had learned it seven times over.

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s so final. Nobody wonders what happened to Ozymandias. Nothing remains, and that’s all you need to know.”

He gave me a different reason every time. He never said the same thing. Poets never do, I suppose. I have never dared to paint Vincent the way he looked then, dead with his eyes open, even though he was just as still and colorless as when he was alive. I always think a painting of him after his death would be my magnum opus. I am always wrong. If Vincent died, poetry died too. It wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t art. It was unfathomable.

I woke up in the manor, one week before the end-of-semester showcase, surrounded by fresh, empty canvases. Nothing beside remained.