study of a match

Chalk and charcoal

What haunts the eye most is the smoke. It drifts, pale and ephemeral, refusing form, just as the presence of a lost love lingers in the mind, shapeless yet insistent. Smoke has no substance to hold, no way back into flame. It is the afterimage of intimacy, lingering briefly before vanishing into air.

The suddenness of the extinguished match conveys the violence of abrupt endings. Love, like fire, is so often imagined as a steady flame, capable of burning as long as it is fed. Yet here, the drawing forces us to confront its fragility—the way one breath, one moment, can be enough to undo it. The starkness of the brown paper beneath intensifies this sense of irreversibility. There is no background to soften the scene, only emptiness that absorbs the little that remains.