The canvas, still wet, whispers
for my hands, drying too soon, cracking
at the edges where I forgot to feed it
more time, more of me.
I haven’t eaten since I saw
that last streak of cobalt pull itself
across the surface, demanding more:
a sliver of sky I didn’t see coming,
a bruise I hadn’t meant to make,
but now I can’t stop bleeding it dry.
There’s an orange in the kitchen,
softened in its peel from days of forgetting.
The fridge hums, a nagging throat,
but my body, the fool,
just paints on.
I’m sick of your loyalty, I say
to my fingers, your devotion.
Your endless courting of ghosts.
But they keep pulling at the bristles,
like children who don’t know hunger
until the fire goes out.
The floor is littered — cups half-filled
with cloudy water, brushes dead
like old cigarettes,
waiting for a hand to lift them back
to the lip of a memory I no longer remember.
Outside, the sun changes rooms.
But I haven’t changed, haven’t moved
past the last moment where the world
was this small:
just pigment, just light,
just this tangled hour repeating itself.
Maybe when this last line bends,
the right curve will reveal a door,
and I’ll step through it, starving
but sated by some other kind of hunger,
the kind that forgets itself
once you’ve let go.
But I don’t let go, do I?
Even in sleep, I’m blending the edges,
looking for the softest shade of forgetting.
Created by a human with AI assistance.
© Subcreation.design 2024. All rights reserved.
