When the Sky Turned Purple

It was supposed to be blue. Calm, reliable, nothing too wild. But somewhere between my brush and hers, the blue decided it had other plans. She reached over — without even asking — and dipped into my palette. A streak of magenta swirled into my sky.

I froze. She didn’t. She just grinned, her cheek smudged with paint like some battle mark, and said, “It needed to breathe.”

We kept going. Blue, magenta, streaks of white. By the time we stepped back, the “calm sky” had become a swirling, electric purple dusk that looked nothing like my plan and everything like ours.

That’s what happens when you paint with someone — the control slips, the colors talk back, and something new takes shape. I didn’t get the painting I imagined, but I got a better one. And maybe that’s the whole point.