My wooden pencil scratches lines across my paper,
Spastically splitting the dry paper along its path.
Line. Curve. Bend.

Faint voices dance around me,
As I observe my work.
The edge of my vision is
Obscured with blurry figures
As they waltz around me
Like shadows from a candle
With their artwork.
Voices are unidentifiable from one another,
A convoluted mess of speech.
But my sketch is clear.
Bad. Wrong. Boring.

My own personal critic shouts at me:
“You’re doing that wrong.”
“That arm needs to be longer.”
“The anatomy is off here.”
“It could be stylized more there.”
I listen to his reviews,
And strive for my personal perfection.
I do estimates of how this would look here,
Whether or not it would destroy
The figures structure I carefully crafted.
Figure. Anatomy. Muscle.

It looks ugly
Like a broken statue,
but it passes.
The head isn’t proportioned right.
The emotional appeal of the look is off.
The pose looks stiff.
Flow. Rhythm. Feeling.

“Oh wow, that looks awesome, do you like art?”
The words catch my ear.
My personal essay of hatred relays.
“Thanks, yeah.” I dully reply.
I relay pretentious little curses in my head
Snapping at how wrong they are.