“The Lattice Where I Lost Myself”
There was once a man who tried to hide from his own reflection—not out of shame, but because his reflection had begun to speak in a dialect he never learned. The man, whose name changed hourly depending on who remembered him, constructed a tower—not of stone, but of pixelated hesitations and emotional residue. Each layer was a moment he almost said something honest, then stopped.
One night, in the middle of an artificial forest swirling with chlorophyll logic and copper regrets, he stepped inside the tower and removed himself, one slice at a time.
First his hair. Then his stare. Then his misremembered arguments.
Each piece was pressed into the layers you see now—interrupted by coral scars that held what couldn’t be filed: impulse, muscle memory, and unresolved laughter.
The green matrix wasn’t paint. It was thought in fluid form, the atmosphere of the memory-architecture he forgot to dismantle. It moved. It still moves. You can feel it watching you, slightly, gently questioning your commitment to being whole.
The face? Yes, it’s his. Or mine. Or yours. Depends on when you’re asking.
It was never finished. That was the point.
If this painting flickers when you pass it, do not turn. It is just the tower remembering that you, too, have skipped parts of yourself. That you, too, are layered.
And it is waiting to file you in.