Nana’s Gift

For ages, the spirits of artists
have been filling heaven.
enhancing the gallery of clouds
filling the closet of colors, ideas and brush-strokes.
Even working with light in northern evenings.

The conventional white and blue, still popular,
images of random objects, animals, faces of lovers;
within the white and gray.

Sometimes they give us a blue canvas
with small faded clouds, far away,
like missed chalk-marks on a lazily cleaned board.
Other days, they overdo themselves,
leaving us to guess the colors we would see.
The sun blocked by a pile of afghans.

Today, the sky is a gift
from my grandmother
whispering to the spirits
“Try to add green, he loves green
and layer it, he bores easily”

In a Almost Empty Room

She keeps saying
"It's not the way it looks."

As she paints black
over a used canvas,
once a blend of colors like a sunrise.
Auburns, reds, yellows, purples
all disappearing under the black.

She ties my ankles
to the legs of the chair
with frame hanging wire.
She says, "Run away".

More wire and she ties my wrists
to the arms of the chair.
With a small putty knife
she is cutting off my pants,
tearing open the seams
on the side of the legs.
"I want to see who you really are"

and eventually, I am naked.

She tells me not to look at her
takes a razor and cuts open my eyelids
Skin that was once part of me
thrown onto the once-sunrise-black.

Behind me now, I cannot see her.
Slowly my hair is being cut off
then my head is roughly shaved
"You are not who I fell in love with"

Scalp bleeding into wounds
that were once my eyes
"You decided long ago
that you would be
the one hurt most"

She just stands there
covered in bits of
hair, blood, denim and black.
Staring, until she walks out of the room.

All is silent,
but for my breathing,
and the dripping of blood
into my ears.

When she comes back into the room
she is holding the bottom half
of what once was a hollow statue.

Close to me now
"I'm trying to show you how much I love you"
She kicks the arm of the chair
I fall back
my head lands hard onto the ground
I taste blood and adrenaline.

I feel the air move
through what was once my eyelids as
she moves to stand over me
"I never meant to hurt you"
Through red and tears
I see her looking at me.

I believe her.

She lowers what is left of the statue into my chest
I smell acrylic and blood.
I see blood red fading to black.
And then I smell Her.

I try to forget
the pain, the past,
the smells of pain(t)
and I'm bound
laying here naked
bald and bleeding