Oil on canvas, 61 × 30.5 cm, 2026 Some books stay with me long after I’ve forgotten most of the plot. Not as quotes or scenes I can retell, but as something much harder to separate from myself. A feeling, a fear, a way of looking at people, a thought that quietly became mine. After a while, memory gets messy, and I no longer know exactly what came from life and what I borrowed from a story. Maybe that’s why fiction can feel so personal. We carry pieces of lives we never lived, people we never met, places we’ve never been. Perhaps we are partly made of things that never happened to us. Maybe we don’t only read books. Maybe they read us too. The NFT does not include the physical painting; however, the NFT holder is entitled to preferential terms for acquiring it separately, subject to availability. © 2026 Sashelka. All rights reserved.