she leans me up against the wall of her atelier
like one of her watercolor paintings tinted in grey,
says i remind her of a woman she drew in
black-and-white. tells me that my gaze has
always been smudged with charcoal.
i look at the highway like she said i would,
my eyesight is smudged with charcoal and missing a
love i didn’t deserve at all. these phone lines draw
pencil marks against the clouds,
on and on and on and on.
there is alizarin crimson smeared across my palm,
she decides it is the color of my aura. i do not interfere
with the soul-searching of an artist, she slathers it across
the canvas like blood on the walls.
crystallized turpentine catches in my throat.
i am painting a future without her,
sap green into phthalo blue into ultramarine across
the atlantic. i fly. i flee.