Painting

When you stretched the truth-white canvas so blinding bright on my frame, I knew this would be the last time I’d see you, ever.

You painted my story in blood-clot-thick words like they’d need help sticking,

but I would have held them tight to my skin anyway, ’cause I’d need them to keep me company.

These people don’t know what I mean when I say I’m alone but not lonely.

After seventeen years of missed phone calls and gettin’ picked up only to be left with someone else, 

I’m used to abandonment, to being alone, with myself.

You painted divorce and disappointment in envy green and camouflage. Too young to really understand,

I dealt with it.

It wasn’t all bad, though. 

In the center you painted pickles and rhubarb crisp, baby brothers who bite really hard

and vomit their own weight in baby formula on my favorite 101 Dalmations dress,

four-leaf clovers and dandelion crowns floating in fresh mud puddles.

With quick strokes and hard bristles you painted Jesus in my heart only to

palette-knife-scrape him away and fill the space with Goddess, ’cause

you really put yourself into your work.

At the time, it made more sense to me that you’d be a woman,

’cause only a woman could paint me in braces and motorcycle rides

but keep the colors soft enough to stay beautiful.

Still, the composition wasn’t quite right

it needed a lesson in mistrust 

so you painted me a boy who was best friend but never lover

and gave him venom to spit, to burn my white canvas skin

when he realized that was all he’d ever be to me

And you and I, God, together we scrubbed him away with spirits

but while his face blurred, his snake-mouth anger left a black hole stain that will never really be gone.

All we can do is cover it with primer and see if we can find the color of forgiveness to drip over it, lightly,

because it’s been six years now and I still have yet to forgive, and

I’ll be a relic in your private collection, God, before I forget him.

That’s when you handed me the brushes and sent me away with goodbyes and forget-me-nots

and told me I needed to finish it.

I can’t paint worth a shit.

I’m too proud to ask for your help, and all I’ve done since then is make a mess of it.

This painting will never sell, and goddammit this baby brother vomit and black hole stains are really soaking in.

Now stop laughing and hand me the paint thinner.