“The Alchemy of Sunflowers”
By: Joseph Brindley
they called him broken –
as if a fractured mind
couldn’t still conjure sky.
they forget how he walked the fields
not to escape the noise
but to give it form.
his steps wrote hymns
into the soil,
even when no one stayed to read them.
he was never spared the pain.
it clawed into brushstroke,
not hidden,
but translated with redemption.
he did not paint to feel better.
he painted to speak louder.
this was not healing.
this was transcription –
a way to let sorrow be seen
without making it small.
they mistook the yellow for cheer.
they missed how his stars
bled out from the dark,
how he spilled ochre
until the hush flinched,
taught silence what it meant
to be seen.
he did not silence the storm –
he gathered it.
let the thunder strain into pigment.
let sorrow stretch his seeing
until the blaze became a threshold.
he did not chase light.
he became it.
and still they left.
friends. family.
his name curled from their mouths
like something better buried.
but the canvas stayed.
so he offered it
the only thing he had left: devotion that burned
through absence.
his hands outlived their forgetting.
his grief became exaltation.
his solitude, a cathedral.
his silence,
a sermon in color.
no gallery could frame
what he gave us.
he gifted us
the echo of awe,
the ache of a sky
that once pulsed through one man’s eyes.
you do not need to feel loved
to offer something lasting.
no one must choose you
for your light
to outlive them.
what he made
wasn’t escape –
it was a resurrection
of every moment
he refused to let the dark win.
he proved
that even if you are unchosen,
even if you are unseen,
even if the world
cannot hold you,
you can still
teach the stars
how to listen.
© 2025
