I used to be a painter.

I made canvasses out of cardboard and Gesso, abandoned hotel lobby re-prints with a gilded frame

I sat up for hours while cheap speed roiled through my body

Used my fingers to perfect the shadowing on their faces, a snapshot captured not by memory

But madness

And ate my mania raw and whole, fistfuls of sleeplessness stuffed in my eyes

As the dawn teased my subconscious

And threw the paint on my hands

Into high relief.

There was too much I couldn't say, back then; there were words I knew

And knew not to say. If you feed a blackbird

Silk white berries from a graveyard

Does it lay diamonds in its nest? I couldn't pull enough of my hair out

To make a place to sleep

I couldn't find whoever it was that was supposed to be

Someone you can rely on

And I found my mind, crumbling away, taking my words with it, taking everything

But feelings.

So I put them down, I painted them down, palms streaked to the wrists with a rainbow

Of violent intentions

Subverted into a time capsule

I called a painting.

Maybe that was wiser than what I do now, with all of these words, spilling everywhere

On everything

Everyone

Maybe I am finally old enough to take what I feel and name it, on a canvass I didn't have to steal

Or make from trash

Maybe I could paint again

With a heart

Less comfortable

With destruction.