Thursday, September 5, 2019

Waves



when she stopped making art,
she became angry,
anxious, irritable, resentful.

she would watch him draw horned beasts,
using only red and black pen on a white canvas.
she would watch him outside a window
swirling acrylics on metal surfaces.
she would browse through her old drawings,
or find a stray red pencil in a drawer.

what had once moved through her?
and where did it go?

early on, when she had felt the first wave  
she got derailed
trapped by her own need for affection
for acceptance, for love.
she abandoned everything to move in with a stranger
she left for the ocean.

every warning was ridiculed,
she surrounded her thoughts with an iron fence.
her body was burdened,
her lungs were tight and closed,
and the thing that once moved through her
became so small as to be invisible.

she thought about it for years.
sometimes she attempted a small drawing,
but she had lost trust in her own hands.
she judged the lines before they were complete,
saw herself as another would see her,
as another might see her.

later she fled,
or was cast aside.
she escaped the narrow path
of needles and crime,
lies and delusion,
denial and fear.
she salvaged what lay just inside the dumpster
and left the rest
to become a vague memory.

and she found herself in a room,
staring out a window.
how long had it been since she drew?

he said to her:
'if you want to make art, make art.'
and she stared at him
with tears in her eyes.

she thought she had to wait
for something to happen,
for a burst,
for an explosion,
for shapes to break open the gates
and explode onto the page.

she watched him standing in the sun
just outside the window.
he never noticed her there,
just a few feet away.
the canvas was on the ground on a blue tarp.
he let the colors mingle,
then would occasionally move
one side of the canvas or another.

After a while
she went back to her room.