Sometimes and after I would sit beneath one of my mother’s paintings
where she’d left it to dry, oil outlines of my brother
or my father against warm-colored backgrounds.
She would leave her bottle of red wine uncorked by the window,
as if for me, her lipstains pressed in a perfect pattern around the opening;
everything she touched was art.
I craved it; the art, and the womanhood that settled in the bottom of a bottle.
I’d get wine-drunk just to know the taste of growing old,
the bitter red liquid in my mouth staining my own untouched lips.
The longer I sat and watched a painting dry, the more the mistakes stuck out;
the uneven blobs of cheap oil colors made me want to smooth down
my father’s crooked smile, soften my brother’s hair.
Or shut my eyes so my mother’s painting was empty and it was gone.
I’d feel then the naked darkness of peering into eyelids
where once a canvas had been.
I would have sat by that window,
the emptying bottle between my knees,
all day and night if it meant she would have painted me.
where she’d left it to dry, oil outlines of my brother
or my father against warm-colored backgrounds.
She would leave her bottle of red wine uncorked by the window,
as if for me, her lipstains pressed in a perfect pattern around the opening;
everything she touched was art.
I craved it; the art, and the womanhood that settled in the bottom of a bottle.
I’d get wine-drunk just to know the taste of growing old,
the bitter red liquid in my mouth staining my own untouched lips.
The longer I sat and watched a painting dry, the more the mistakes stuck out;
the uneven blobs of cheap oil colors made me want to smooth down
my father’s crooked smile, soften my brother’s hair.
Or shut my eyes so my mother’s painting was empty and it was gone.
I’d feel then the naked darkness of peering into eyelids
where once a canvas had been.
I would have sat by that window,
the emptying bottle between my knees,
all day and night if it meant she would have painted me.
