I made a cake. It looked beautiful. Not one of those overly neat, complicated fondant things that used to be in vogue; instead, a tastefully askew cake with real flowers stuck onto it. Wabisabi.

I suppose I could have just eaten it myself and refused to share it. But, sharing is caring! Up it went, with its planned shadows and angles, its cropped borders containing it perfectly for speedy consumption.

It tasted like a square. What do squares taste like, you ask? 

Nothing.

The texture didn’t come through at all. The cream had flattened, and the rise had sunk. The flowers weren’t meant to be eaten, but I couldn’t resist. I popped a nasturtium into my mouth to taste it. Its usual pepperiness had vanished. Poof.

People liked it anyway! Their praise poured in. Claps, hearts, smileys. 

Later, I made a sculpture. It had wires, lightbulbs, old flip flops, and one single found feather in it. I shaped it all into a lively, glorious thing, and painted some of the bits a brilliant crimson, and others a lustrous yellow. 

I suppose I could have just kept it for myself. But, sharing is relevance! 

When I looked at it later, it was beige. It looked like it could fit into anybody’s home. Compressed, easy, aesthetically pleasing. The components were blended so finely together that I couldn’t see my work at all. I touched one of the sharp bits, but the noise was so reduced I couldn’t feel a damn thing.

People loved it anyway! Their praise poured in. Claps, hearts, smileys. 

Then one day, I painted a self-portrait. I studied myself, and my perception of myself, and others’ perception of me, and all the angles in all the mirrors, and the light in my eye or lack thereof, and how I looked, looking at myself. Very lifelike indeed, I declared, painting sunlight alla prima with a palette knife.

I walked into my studio that evening to check if the paint had dried. I looked at myself in the mirror and then back at the painting. The whites of my eyes, my eyes on the canvas, weren’t white at all. They had turned the color of my wheaten flesh, as if demanding to be different from reality, insisting on being fake. 

I suppose I could have re-painted her into submission, but the hour was late and the algorithm was waiting.  Sharing is work! 

People liked it anyway! Their praise poured in. Claps, hearts, smileys. 

The cake and the sculpture and the self-portrait looked perfect next to each other, separated into neat lines, each with their claps, hearts, and smiles. I gazed at the relics, trying to discern their shapes and feelings and meanings and tastes and smells. 

Then I took a photograph with my cake and my sculpture and my image of myself so they would feel less spectral. Soon, I, the artist and the baker, the sculptor and the thinker, became neat, texture-free, beige, a wraith, a loss, and then the claps, hearts, and smileys came again. And again. And again. My irises floated untethered in a brownish, wheaten, tan pond. I was content. 

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Sai Pradhan is an Indian American writer and artist who lives in Hong Kong. Sai used to write opinions for the Hong Kong Free Press, and restaurant reviews for a now defunct Los Angeles publication. She has recently published pieces of fiction in Ligeia magazine, Litro magazine, and Calamari Archives’ Sleepingfish. She has a personal essay forthcoming in The Iowa Review. Her art will be featured in an upcoming issue of Sublunary Review and is part of the Hong Kong Arts Collective’s Summer Exhibition in Hong Kong.