# What's the Beauty, What's the Ache?I keep asking myself this.Some days I think I know.Other days it slips through my fingers like silk.Too tender to hold.Too real to ignore.Maybe I'm not# What's the

I keep asking myself this.

Some days I think I know.

Other days it slips through my fingers like silk.

Too tender to hold. Too real to ignore.

Maybe I'm not looking for an answer.

Maybe I just want to stay with the question a little longer.

What's the beauty?

It's rarely what I expect.

Is it the colour that clings to your fingers long after the brush has been washed?

Or the scent of something you once loved, still bottled on a shelf?

Or the morning light finding its way across the floor before you've decided how to feel?

Some days I think it's the way honey catches the sun.

Other days, it's my son's old slippers by the door.

Still waiting.

Beauty isn't always joyful.

Sometimes it arrives wearing the same clothes as grief.

And the ache?

It's reaching for a hand that isn't there anymore.

Making dinner for someone who never comes home.

Opening your mouth to speak, then deciding the silence already said enough.

It's the painting that sat unfinished because life asked something else of you first.

It's realising that softness survives, even when it has nowhere to land.

I don't think beauty erases the ache.

I don't think the ache ruins the beauty either.

Perhaps they've been sitting beside each other all along, quietly making room for one another.

Maybe that's why I keep painting.

Not because I've figured anything out.

Because sometimes colour understands what I can't.

And perhaps that's enough.

— Dura Ki Hana