Sinking Ship

He would say things like, “You’re so talented,
you should paint pictures of boats.
You could sell tons of them”!

My lack of interest in making a fortune
in the nautical genre drove him crazy.

It made him try all the more to convince
me more that I shouldn’t be
wasting time painting what I wanted,
or more precisely
what I was passionately interested in painting.

I should paint what he thought I should.

Had I thought of it, an appropriate reply would have been,
“Here, Dad, I’ll show you how to paint boats
then you can paint them
all you want.

It’s your passion, after all, not mine”.

Instead, I painted a picture of a sinking ship
and left it on his chair.

He hung the painting at an angle,
so it looked like a normal ship
about to be hit by an enormous wave.