There's a jam jar on the shelf over the sink, half full of skins. Dried acrylic peel, mostly, curled up like toenails. Some charcoal dust, a few flakes of the ochre I used on the piece that sold. It's disgusting. It looks like something you'd find in a hoarder's kitchen.

Started as laziness. I'd peel the palette and drop the bits in instead of the bin, and then one day I noticed the colors had sorted themselves into layers. The cadmium on top, the burnt umber down at the bottom going back months. You can read it like a core sample.

I've moved that jar twice now. Packed it in a box with the good brushes, unpacked it first.

Anyway I finally used some of it last week. Crushed a couple of the skins with the back of a spoon, mixed them into a wash for a piece about my mother's kitchen. It went muddy and gray-green and honestly it's the best thing on the canvas. Something about the paint already having been alive once.

The jar's empty now and I feel weird about it. Not sad exactly. Just like I threw out a diary.

I don't know if I'll start another one or if that was the whole point and I should let it be.