Painter

You came to me
and first I saw your nature.
I made colours
and all things sensory
to relate myself to you.
and in this way you were,
not there, in the shuffle of my canvas
but in the space between brush and stroke.

So it was, much later, my body,
for the first time with brush in hand
made your body, and soon
I moved to be with you, and by painting
the first canvas,
sensing an appearance of you by traversing
the heat rising up through my hands,
not to clutch at air, not to grasp at spaces
but to warm the room.

My hands are yours, my fire mine, understanding
your nature by the movement of your words,
the voice that placed you in activity
from across the room,
the breath of you, bringing you into being; your scope,
pace, and the sway, the way I could sense
a soul I love.

And then I
painted in sickness,
forgive me.
I am the painter masseuse
who learned to paint portrait faithfully
with my eyes, reading the human body
for signs of its pain, its lies, and its truth –
and my trust,
broken, and battered by the past,
painted poorly when you went home,
and put on canvas, artichokes.

I count hours in fractions of time
that you excuse the soft brain; only eat the soft heart,
because the spikes are old, and all mine.