Melted Crayon Mona Lisa

More about Melted Crayon Mona Lisa

The back of my van was half workshop, half ghost. Stainless steel on one side, rustable steel on the other—my private museum of decay. Between them sat a black plastic tray, the big one, thirty-six by twenty-four, holding my little alcohol burner like a heart transplant on loan. I’d bent the burner’s thin tube last week when I shoved too many art supplies behind the seat. So I fixed it with fiberglass concrete and sealed the crack with a thumbprint of beeswax. It looked like a mistake learning to survive, but it burned clean. The flame was a blue whisper, bright as logic, steady as regret.

The van smelled of crayons and old rain. I had the wax sticks laid out like tiny sacrifices—orange, viridian, red, and one stub that used to be called carnation. Their wrappers were gone, their names rubbed out. The sketch pad sat open on my knees, black paper hungry for light. The burner threw its small, tender glow, and the wax shone like it remembered being honey.

Fifty-five years ago, there was a rumor in school—a kid had made the Mona Lisa out of melted crayons. No one ever saw it, but everyone swore it existed. I used to picture him, freckles, candlelight, dripping colors onto paper, turning heat into mystery. And there was another kid, one who drew with a pencil so fine and slow he could make gray turn into the idea of color—burgundy, navy, forest green—all hiding inside the graphite.

Now it’s me, older, softer at the edges, sitting in the back of a van that rocks with the wind. The wax runs and pools, reds into oranges, blues into shadow. The heat isn’t fierce—it’s kind. I melt, press, and scrape until she appears again, the old Mona, patient and knowing, smiling like she’s waited all this time for me to come back.

When I stop, the wax cools into ridges like fingerprints. I close the pad and listen to the van creak, the burner’s flame flickering low. It has no smell, just that clean, invisible heat, with a faint ghost of beeswax somewhere in it. I think of the boy with the rumor, the one with the pencil, fifty-five years gone. Maybe nothing ever really burns out. Maybe it’s not the painting that lasts, but the small blue flame that wants to.