Seven Bangles Beneath the Moon
a voice from the girl beneath the tree
I wear the bangles like a duty,
each one whispering a name I don’t know—
a prayer in a language
my mouth has forgotten
but my bones still recall.
They say my name means Jade.
Stone of luck,
of legacy,
of what endures.
But I go by Mai—
softer, simpler,
something I can carry
without explanation.
There are seven in the shadows.
I do not know their faces—
only their watching.
They do not speak,
but sometimes the wind smells like home
I’ve never lived in.
The moon calls me like a mother I never had—
or maybe one who never knew how to hold
without trembling.
I am not here to pray.
I am here to be witnessed.
Half-girl, half-wing,
I kneel beneath the willow
and let my silence rise like incense
toward something
older than answers.
With Grace & Ink,
Mai
Colours Of A Soul
My heart is not a single shade—
it is a house of four winds,
each room painted with the breath
of a different presence.
One holds the past,
one loosens the ache,
one opens to light,
one dares to give it all away.
Together, they move my blood.
Together, they are the colour of my soul.
A small vessel glides across still waters—
not fleeing, but arriving.
There was a time it bore more than it should,
when the river asked too much.
And yet, it returned—
not empty,
but wiser.
Smooth sailing now,
full circle.
Storm met. Storm passed.
The water knows.
A current wrapped in silver
once mistook stillness for control.
It tried to hold what could not be held—
to tether, to rescue,
to name the stars one by one.
Letting go became the holiest act.
Not everything needs saving.
Some things bloom
only when left
to orbit on their own.
Under a sky split open with color,
something watches—
still and bright.
Love arrives here
not as reward
but as birthright.
The gaze is pure,
untouched by doubt.
Joy is not fire,
but a quiet warmth
that never flinches.
A flame that dances on the cliff’s edge—
bold enough to leap
without a landing.
Everything was poured into this blaze:
belief,
silence,
wild permission.
And still—
it needed to burn alone.
Distance became devotion.
What flies beyond the storm
carries every ember it was ever given.
Four winds.
Four turns of the compass.
Four notes in a pulse that never stops.
In every hue they’ve left behind—
dusk, silver, emerald, flame—
I became not a name,
but a vessel.
This is the colour of my soul.
Medium: Oil on plywood
Painted in quiet conversation with the moon.
May 31st -June 3rd, 2025
Colours of a Soul
“like seeing what the soul looks like from the inside…”
We are all held together by rhythm—
the heart beating not just to keep us alive,
but to remind us we feel.
The human heart has four chambers,
four quiet quadrants that speak without words:
one receives what was,
one releases what no longer belongs,
one welcomes what is new,
and one sends it all out again—
transformed,
alive,
light-bearing.
This painting and poem moved through me in those very rhythms.
Each quadrant of my heart held a different story,
a different color,
a different kind of becoming.
They spoke in four winds:
memory, surrender, clarity, and fire.
Here, they speak without labels.
No names. No roles.
Only presence. Only pulse.
This is a visual and verbal rendering of what it might look like
to share the inside of a soul—
not explained,
but revealed.
Painted in quiet conversation with the moon.
Penned by intuition.
And offered here, for you.
With Grace & Ink,
Mai
The Tree That Heard Silence
Medium: Oil on canvas | Created March 28, 2025
—a dialogue with Despair—
I was listening when Silence spoke—
she whispered a scream, and the tree woke.
He bowed and bent as she began
to tell of her walk with Despair, hand in hand.
They sat once by the well of deep water—
no ripple, no wind, not even time bothered.
“It's maddening,” she said, “don’t you think?
The circle of questions that never quite sink.”
“Do you hear the violins crying?”
“No… perhaps that sorrow’s mine to lie in.”
Despair let her weight fall onto Silence’s lap
resting her head for just a moment, perhaps.
“You find comfort in this, Despair?”
“I do.” —her tears gave the silence air.
Silence, still, asked nothing back—
and in that nothing, nothing lacked.
With Grace & Ink,
Mai
The
piece
becoming
itself
NOT ENOUGH
Medium: Oil on Canvas | Created: March 13–15, 2025
Created during a moment of unexpected grief.
This was my first experience with oil paint—unplanned, unresearched, raw.
The paint took days to dry, much like the wound it came from.
I sat with the child inside me, the one who once believed she wasn’t enough.
This piece was her voice, her exhale.
And when the paint finally dried, something in me whispered:I am enough.
Not Enough
by Mai Wells
I didn’t mean to paint this.
I just meant to breathe.
But the ache moved through my hands
before I could stop it.
I was talking to the moon and trees that night—
telling them I’d come so far,
asking why I still hurt
in places I thought had long gone silent.
The moon didn’t answer.
But she stayed.
So I picked up the brush.
No instructions.
No plan.
Just oil paint and a whisper:
Try.
The paint moved like grief.
Thick. Slow. Unapologetic.
It wouldn’t dry,
just like I couldn’t yet.
What poured out
was a face I didn’t know
but somehow had always been.
Eyes wide.
Roots rising.
A wound, dressed as a tree.
It was ugly.
And it was sacred.
I called it Not Enough,
because in that moment
I believed the lie again.
And I let myself feel it—
the whole, horrible weight
of not being worthy.
But as the paint dried,
so did the shame.
I sat beside that younger version of me,
the girl who had been told to shrink.
I let her speak.
I let her cry.
And then I whispered back:
No, love.
You are more than enough.
You always were.
Even when no one saw it.
Even when you forgot it.
Even now.
The painting didn’t change.
But I did.
And that,
I’ve come to learn,
is what healing looks like.
This painting wasn’t for display.
It was for survival.
But maybe someone else needs to see it, too.
Painted By the Moon
A Journey Shared
(Original IG Reflection)
I know in my heart—I am a writer.
I write from my soul,
leaving pieces of myself on each page,
hoping those who wander across my words feel a pull in their soul—
There was a night—
a full moon draped in California’s sky,
the darkness deepest in sight,
clouds like soft gray strokes left behind—
as if they hadn’t realized the night had begun...
And I,
never having painted—
yet with the ache of an artist’s heart—
tried.
Under brush and breath,
a story began to bloom—
shadows bending,
the moon whispering secrets
only half-formed in my mind.
With love circling close,
I sent it—
a fragment of myself—
to my eldest sister,
seeking her truth,
knowing the sharp softness
of the honesty we share.
Her words came,
carried on hesitation’s breath –
The moon should be fuller, brighter.
That— is not a distant ship.
The sky feels too dark.
I was offering her a piece of me—
fragile, unfinished,
stained with the quiet hues of my own becoming—
she received it through her own lens,
woven with a story once shared—
a dreamy tale of the ocean’s hush
and hopes, long set adrift, almost forgotten.
Distant ships drifted beneath a moon,
silver and breathless,
hanging like a whispered promise
between tides and twilight dreams—
glowing with the memory of things
that once wished to be found.
So often, it drifts this way—
words given like open hands,
believed to hold a single story,
yet received as something else entirely,
reshaped by tides of memory,
colored by meanings only they have known.
How beautiful,
I think now,
how human—
this gentle dance of interpretation.
There was a time I might have questioned myself,
unraveled the thread too soon.
But I am awake now—
softer with myself,
wiser to the quiet lessons in passing moments.
I understand that life unfolds in fragments,
each of us holding different pieces of the same story,
and we can follow the thread –
continue the search.
So I share this with you—
a reminder to remain open,
to stand unguarded in your becoming.
Be uninhibited.
Let the spark in you catch fire.
And if these words stir something quiet in you,
if you feel the faint pull—
walk with me for a while.
Maybe, just maybe,
we can share a journey—
for a season,
for a chapter,
for a whispered moment
between stories.
With Grace & Ink,
~Mai
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas | Created: February 18, 2025
Prologue
Originally shared as a reflection on Instagram, this was my first painting—created before I left California, unknowingly offering my soul a quiet, necessary goodbye. What began as an experiment became a revelation. Below is the original piece, followed by what time and becoming have since taught me.
What I Know Now
I didn’t pick up the brush to make art.
I picked it up because something in me needed a way out.
This painting became my farewell to California—not in a loud, definitive way, but in a quiet surrender. I left behind years: the nightly Disneyland fireworks, moonlit beach drives, the version of me who once called that place forever.
And as I painted, something unexpected began to form.
The moon wasn’t just overhead.
It was moving through me.
It was the first time I said goodbye the right way. Not through burnout, not through silence. But through expression.
And in return, the painting gave me a beginning.
I called it Painted by the Moon because that’s what it felt like—like I was a vessel, and the moon had waited until I was finally still enough to speak through me.
What I left behind: memory, place, identity I’d outgrown.
What began to form: the me that could sit in uncertainty and trust it would still be sacred.
This is entry two in Fragments & Brushstrokes—a collection of my paintings paired with what rises around them. Not perfect, not planned. Just honest.
If this piece stirs something in you, I welcome you to walk with me, for a while.
How it started yesterday…
UNDECIDED
I didn’t know what I was painting.
I never do.
But this bridge showed up.
And the moon.
And a path that curved toward something I didn’t name until after it was finished.
Maybe this is what happens when the heart speaks
before the mind catches up.
A crossing.
A quiet grief.
A soft goodbye.
Not for someone—
maybe just a version of myself
I’m not meant to carry anymore.
Maybe the bridge was never meant
to take me to an end.
But to a place of remembering—
and resting what no longer needs to walk with me.
Grief,
shame,
old expectations still clinging like dew
on stones too tired to carry my weight.
It doesn’t lead to closure.
It leads to reverence.
To a gentle place
where I can leave behind
not what I am—
but what I no longer need to be.
With Grace & Ink,
~Mai
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas | Created: May 20th, 2025
Ghosted Boat Ride
She wondered—
if she sat near them
on that slow, silent boat ride—
would they feel her?
Especially the little one,
the one she was bound to by thread,
emerging, but not seen...
She wasn’t lost.
Just far—
in a way that made silence louder
and scent more sacred.
The bond stayed,
braided like river reeds beneath the surface.
Still there.
Still pulling.
She rose,
walked the aisle between flickers of memory,
wondered if her hand
could slip through the veil
to touch a curl of hair.
Would she turn?
Would she smell the faint trace
of her old perfume?
Then—
a shimmer caught her in the water.
She leaned—
but it was her own reflection,
warped, and weeping.
She turned—
they were gone.
Not gone like vanished,
gone like scattered—
shards of time she still longs for,
but cannot reach.
With Grace & Ink,
Mai
This was the first spark—
a photo taken decades ago.
I didn’t know these eyes would return,
not just in memory,
but in brushstroke and ghostlight.
I was only trying to see
if I could paint
what never truly left.
